‘Cricket is a relatively violent game’: When Taylor Swift got confused by Kevin Pietersen’s ‘chest match’ talk
Cricket can be a little confusing for an outsider, especially if you’re an American. An example of this came when singer-songwriter Taylor Swift was on the Graham Norton Show with former England cricketer Kevin Pietersen. Back then (in 2014), Pietersen had just released an autobiography called “KP: The Autobiography”, which, among many other things, also dealt with the infamous “textgate” scandal where he was found sending “provocative” messages to the South Africa cricket team in 2012, including some nasty ones about then England captain Andrew Strauss, in the middle of a Test series. The discovery of those texts led to Pietersen being dropped from the England team for the final Test of that series.
So when Pietersen was doing the talk show rounds to promote his autobiography, he found himself being asked some prickly questions about the “textgate” scandal by Norton. All the while, Swift is sharing the couch with Pietersen looking increasingly confused.
In the episode of the Graham Norton Show, Taylor Swift — who is about to drop her 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, soon — confesses that she has never been to a cricket match.
“But I went to Lord’s today,” she says.
At this, Pietersen jumps at the opportunity to pull her leg: “If you Google ‘cricket’, you will get a result that ‘Lord’s is the home of cricket.’ So Taylor walked through the door at Lord’s, and said: ‘Cricket, of course I know who you are’. ‘No, you don’t! You don’t know what cricket is!’
At this stage, Swift defends herself saying: “I know what cricket is. I know it’s relatively violent.”
Swift then explains that in an episode of the popular sitcom FRIENDS, Ross Geller is dating an English girl, and in a scene Ross joins his girlfriend’s friends in a game of cricket.
“He tries to play and he breaks all the bones in his body! It’s wild,” Taylor Swift says.
At this, Pietersen says: “Wasn’t that rugby?”
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WATCH: Kevin Pietersen and Taylor Swift highlights on the Graham Norton Show
WATCH: The full episode featuring Taylor Swift and Kevin Pietersen
‘Chest matches’ in cricket
The most hilarious moment of this episode came when Swift thought cricketers played “chest matches”. But before we come to that, Norton spoke to Pietersen about the texting scandal.
“Having written all this (in the book) and gone through it again, are there things you would do differently, or do you look back kind of thinking, ‘Actually, I could have had a lot better?’” Norton asks Pietersen.
To this, the former England cricketer says: “One of the biggest mistakes I made was just before his (Strauss’) hundredth Test match, I was involved in the text messaging scandal. For me, it was one of my good friends who was just about to play his hundredth Test match… and (I ruined) his whole week, being the captain of the side, too.”
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Pietersen on the textgate scandal
Strauss had taken over the England captaincy after Pietersen’s brief reign ended in 2009.
Pietersen continues: “Basically, I was involved in that little bit of a scandal the week before his hundredth Test match. He had basically thought in his mind, ‘I’m finishing after this Test match.’ He had captained us for a few years. He was a fantastic captain. He was a very good cricketer, a good friend of mine. I was involved in a bit of a mix-up. Basically that just sort of tarnished his week, which should have been one of the greatest weeks of his career, and I regret that, and I feel so sorry for that. And yeah, it’s sort of tarnished and hurt our relationship a little bit, which I don’t like.”
In the middle of this answer, Pietersen pauses to tell Swift: “Playing a hundred Test matches is quite a big thing. It’s like huge.”
Then as Swift continues to look confused, Pietersen starts to chuckle in the middle of his answer.
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At this point, Swift says: “I love learning. You do your chest match, and then you…”
“Test match,” Pietersen says to much laughter.
