SO KEVIN Pietersen's account of what he may or may not have texted about the England cricket team and who may or may not have said what when and to whom in the England dressing room is finally available for all to read, just in time for the Christmas shopping season.

Meanwhile, the BBC has just started its own back-biting and recrimination bonanza in 12 parts, otherwise known as The Apprentice, with Alan Sugar, sorry my Lord Headmaster, ever on the look-out for opportunities to show that he is top dog.

It is going to be a bad-tempered autumn.

Cricket is an unusual game, in that the players have long periods during games when they are sitting in the changing room with nothing to do except talk to each other. The higher the level they are playing at, the longer they will do so, until by the time they are playing Tests, they can spend whole days and more having to make small talk with their teammates, especially if it is raining.

In those circumstances, if personalities start to grate on each other, inevitably trivial problems will magnify themselves. If the characters involved are abrasive or touchy or have big egos, then team morale will plummet and the playing results will quickly follow suite. Exhibit A, the last Ashes series.

Dressing room harmony is essential for a successful cricket team and if team selection has to be based more on social skills and general compatibility rather than playing talent, then so be it. It's no good having a superstar team if all the members want to do is get in each other's way, as they do in The Apprentice.

But In the programme, they are not expected to show team spirit because then the boardroom would be tame. The programme's success is built around the losing team clawing each other to death. The moment any team shows signs of developing a lasting team spirit it is broken up.

I would love to hear the off camera discussions in the Apprentice house after each boardroom session – and know how the candidates behave in normal life. Surely they are not really as childish and immature as they appear on television.

Judging by the interviews given in the aftermath of the Ashes drubbing and the pre-publication hype of Pietersen's book, the England camp seems to have put itself through a genteel version of the boardroom, if that is possible.

The Apprentice is still packing in the audiences, 7.3 million average for the last series. But it's hard now to find someone who admits to being glued to it every second of every edition. After a while, however much you enjoy seeing unpleasant people getting their comeuppance, it all gets rather repetitive.

Lord Sugar does his best to keep audiences up by keeping the worst characters in the series even when their actions scream for them to be evicted. He knows he will be judged by the viewing figures and only invited back for another series if they hold up.

So he should be worried that the last Great British Bake-Off series attracted 10.25 million viewers, more than the 7.3 million average for the last Apprentice series. The baking judges actually refuse to eliminate anyone occasionally.

The competitors are nice to each other, just as they are in the Great British Sewing Bee, and we, the viewer, like that. We like to see people doing well. We like to see people behaving normally and actually appreciating each other's abilities.

Maybe that's what the England team needed last winter – a ban on egos in the dressing room and a rigorously enforced policy of looking for the best in each other. Lord Sugar would be appalled.