England cricket captain Alastair Cook says England had a "bad experience" last summer with Kevin Pietersen Kevin Pietersen was hugely disruptive to the England squad but remains its best player. IN the wake of claims by sack coach Mickey Arthur that Australia lacks team unity, England captain Alistair Cook clearly understands the damage a divided side can cause. Kevin Pietersen was so disruptive he was eventually banned from the England team last year for sending derogatory texts about captain Andrew Strauss to South African opponents. "I can only speak what happened in our dressing room and clearly last summer we had a bad experience," an honest and upfront Cook said before the second Test at Lord's starts on Thursday. It shows how hard you've got to work at your team because a fully united team does help your cricket and we constantly have to work at it. The Pietersen melt down and eventual suspension was far worse for England than the revelations allegedly contained in documents Arthur has filed for unfair dismissal. Claims of a rift between Michael Clarke and Shane Watson and a lack of team unity are considered old news by the players, who have regrouped under new coach Darren Lehmann following his appointment last month. However the Pietersen bust-up happened at the epicentre of the England cricket team. His extended dummy spit over not being allowed to pick and chose which games he would play for England so he could make an even larger fortune in the IPL led to the extraordinary suspension of England's best cricketer. After a brilliant 149 against South Africa at Headingley almost a year ago Pietersen brought the saga to a head by claiming "it's not easy being me playing for England" and claimed the next Test at Lord's could be his last. He attempted to recant and unretire from one-day cricket a few days latter by doing a bizarre YouTube interview with his manager saying how much he loves England. Rarely has an attempted patch-up looked more superficial as Pietersen realised too late that the writing on the wall was all about him. Pietersen may continually profess his love of England but the players don't love him. Some players loathe him. One England cricket writer has a teammate talking about Pietersen in unprintably bad language. Yet Pietersen was the architect of England's astonishing turn-around in India after losing the first Test. His brilliant 186 in Mumbai turned that Test and the series. Pietersen was an important contributor in England's 14-run first Test victory at Trent Bridge on Sunday, scoring 64. His team mates may not like him but they want him in the team because he is such an important player. Adam Gilchrist and Shane Warne had no great love for each other but they would be two of the first picked in any Australian side. Whatever the issues may have been between Clarke and Watson, neither of them is Pietersen.