Kevin Pietersen has been cleared of going public in his row with Peter Moores by a senior member of the England and Wales Cricket Board.

Dennis Amiss, the ECB vice-chairman, is a member of the management board which agreed to Moores' and Pietersen's departures, and he insists the governing body were left with little option after the pair's falling out was made public.

"Once the information was in the public domain that Kevin Pietersen didn't want Peter Moores as his coach, it was always going to be impossible to resolve amicably - the ECB board was put in an impossible position," Amiss said. "We don't believe Kevin Pietersen leaked the information, we understand his frustration at it being leaked by other parties."

Amiss confirmed Pietersen had spoken of quitting in the immediate aftermath of the second Test in India last month before agreeing to consider his position on a recent holiday. "We wanted him to go away and think about it while he was in South Africa," he said. "We wanted to resolve the situation as quickly as possible."

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The ECB vice-chairman revealed that sacking Moores "wasn't on the [board's] agenda" until the row with Pietersen surfaced. But despite his part in the coach's dismissal, Amiss insists the batsman's future with England remains bright. "It was felt that we wanted a clean piece of paper, we wanted to rebuild and we wanted a completely unified team," Amiss said. "And the board wanted that as well, especially with all the important cricket we've got coming up.

"Kevin is very much part of the future. He's offered Andrew Strauss [the new captain] his backing, he hopes he will regain the England captaincy. He's got this will, this desire to do well in international cricket."

Steve Harmison has denied he lobbied for Pietersen's removal in the wake of his public row with Moores. Reports described a dressing room divided along broadly pro-Pietersen and pro-Andrew Flintoff lines, with Harmison an alleged member of the latter camp. When Hugh Morris, the England team's managing director, rang players to ask for their opinion on the escalating row between coach and captain, it was claimed some called for Pietersen to be stripped of the captaincy.

"It simply isn't true," Harmison said. "I can say without a moment's hesitation that both Fred [Andrew Flintoff] and I supported Kevin as our captain and our leader, Strauss has already made his backing for Kevin quite clear and any suggestion that we turned against him when Hugh Morris rang us for our views over the crisis is rubbish.

"The idea that we told Morris that we supported Peter Moores ahead of Kevin is nonsense. I just don't accept the notion of a dressing-room rift, with players in one camp or another.

"My belief is that had the row stayed in-house, there might still have been a chance for Morris to get Peter and Kevin together to thrash out the issue, and a hugely upsetting and damaging breakdown might have been avoided."