BUZZWORDS are integral in the lexicon of sport. They give meaning, they provide succinct descriptions, they add to the attraction, and they can also become tedious clichés.

This week, and next, the new shoo-in words start with R and R. Not rest and recuperation, however. Instead the words are reintegration and rehabilitation.

Let’s deal with the first because it is, expeditiously, a completed task.

Kevin Pietersen, that one-man band of cricket bravado, bluster and boundary-battering belligerence, has been offered, and duly signed, a new central contact with the England and Wales Cricket Board.

He is back in the middle of the England fold, seemingly forgiven for his past misdemeanours of disrespecting his then captain Andrew Strauss to then Test series opponents, South Africa, the land of Pietersen’s birth. Hmmm.

Pietersen’s exile was barely more than temporary. Ushered into his period of “reintegration”, it was as if he had hardly been absent before transgressions were reverse-swept away like so much part-time bowling fodder.

There’s no doubting Pietersen’s pedigree as a game-shifting batsman, but there’s even less uncertainty whenever expediency comes into bat. Ooops, slagged off your captain? Never mind, a few weeks in purdah before a few months playing in India, then everything will be cushty.

So as Pietersen ponders a further increase in his pulling power, we turn – like a Monty Panesar delivery – to rehabilitation.

And who’s next on this well-worn path? None other than arguably sport’s most infamous individual cheat, Lance Armstrong.

The cyclist, turned pariah, is expected next week to break his silence on the damning report from the US Anti-Doping Agency of last autumn in which his fall from grace was as spectacular as it was scandalous.

Seven-times Tour de France first cyclist home, Armstrong and his US Postal cycling team were said to have been at the core of “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen”.

In response to the report Armstrong effectively pleaded the Fifth Amendment, cycling away into the opaque red, white and blue yonder as if nothing had happened.

What followed though was the stripping of all his seven tainted Tour yellow jerseys. And trailed in the wake of that punishment was an exodus of Croesus-rich sponsors as the clamour of outright condemnation flared across the sporting world.

But lo, and behold. The man does speak, or he will do next week, booked on The Oprah Winfrey Show in the wee small hours of Friday morning according to Greenwich Mean Time.

Talk about grandstanding. The show is legendary in America as one of the most watched. You can bet the audience figures will reach many millions.

And as for the interrogation, a spokesman for Oprah was quoted in an email as declaring: “No payment for the interview. No editorial control, no question is off limits.”

But how canny is Armstrong? Thanks to dogged investigators, and even more persistent journalists – take a deep, deserved bow David Walsh of The Sunday Times – we now know how calculating Armstrong was.

So his decision to speak for the first time on such a show means he gets his side of the story in without being grilled by any of his peers, or cycling officials, or disciplinary panels.

If the aim for the 41-year-old Armstrong is rehabilitation of his reputation, character, or possible future career as a triathlete – as suggested in some quarters – then this moment of truth, of honesty, of clarification, is one that is being acutely stage-managed.

Rehabilitation also demands contrition and can there be any genuine remorse from Armstrong, who has taken the route to such an undemanding confessional-box?

 

EVEN before the announcement of Armstrong’s appearance on the Oprah show, cheating was to the fore this week when the handball of Liverpool striker Luis Suarez led to the Reds ousting hosts Mansfield from the FA Cup.

There was all manner of outrage and outcry, though very few from within the game.

That is surely because as we all know – and seemingly accept – we witness games every day in which all footballers’ imploring hands go up, or are outstretched, or go flailing about, in the hunt for a throw-in, a free-kick, a corner-kick, a foul, an offside, all when they know they are not deserving of any such award.