Kevin Pietersen: England players are not ready to turn up for Alastair Cook and Peter Moores
Following a series of poor performances by England, with the latest being the Test series loss to Sri Lanka, captain Alastair Cook has come in for severe criticism in recent weeks, and it looks like it is not going to end anytime soon, with the out-of-favour Kevin Pietersen being the latest to join the long list of former cricketers to lambast the 29-year-old for his inept tactics.
“You can only kid the public for so long. If you tell them this is a brave new dawn, that the team will play an aggressive brand of cricket and try to be positive, but then play the same old negative stuff, the supporters will soon turn away from the team in droves,” Pietersen wrote in his column for the Telegraph.
He also suggested that the England players were not ready to give their all for Cook and national coach Peter Moores, indicating that the duo has failed to motivate the players.
The 34-year-old said: “They are not turning up for the captain or coach. Broad and Anderson looked jaded at Headingley. Why? Why was Jimmy so emotional? We have lost a lot of matches in the past but he has never shown such emotion.
“It says to me there is an underlying current of unhappiness. The Australia tour was hard. We were beaten up due to a lot of reasons I cannot go into right now, and some of the senior players are still suffering, with the result that they are struggling to offer leadership in the dressing room.”
Pietersen slams England’s defensive tactics:
Pietersen, in particular, criticized delaying the side’s declaration in the 1st Test match against Sri Lanka at Lord’s, suggesting that the move displayed England management’s fear of losing
Pietersen, who has over 13,000 runs for England in international cricket, said: “They should have comfortably won the first Test against Sri Lanka at Lord’s. The captain and the coach talked glowingly about how attacking they were, scoring runs at 3.4 per over. It was as if they were trying to prove a point by highlighting that positive, but in fact it looked as if Peter Moores and Alastair Cook were scared of losing their first Test in charge.
” If not, then why did they bat so long in the second innings? England wanted the comfort of setting Sri Lanka 380 to win on the last day. Are you serious? It cost them the match.”
The top order batsman, who was made the scapegoat for England’s Ashes whitewash earlier this year Down Under, also had a dig at his ex-national colleague for the lack of runs with the bat and felt that it is making matters all the more difficult for him.
“Cook’s form will be affecting him. I have played with Cooky long enough to know that when that happens he becomes very quiet and introverted. He struggles to handle it.
“Captaining the side without any runs plays on your mind too. I saw in Cook at Headingley the same look Andrew Strauss had when he played his last Test at Lord’s. He was a rabbit in the headlights. It was a shame to see Cooky looking that way,” the South African-born England batsman wrote.
Pietersen, though, did have some words of praise for the young England cricketers who have made their mark in a short span of time and suggested that the England team should be built around them.
“He is lucky that the younger players are providing an example for others to follow. It was absolutely fantastic to see Gary Ballance, Sam Robson, Joe Root and Moeen Ali scoring hundreds. Add Ben Stokes and Buttler to the mix and suddenly England will have a team mostly made up of young cricketers without any baggage, taking to Test cricket quickly and being successful.”