Pietersen escapes punishment over Twitter tirade

Kevin Pietersen will not be disciplined for his latest Twitter outburst but his captain Andrew Strauss has warned him to be responsible with his comments in the future. In a series of tweets Pietersen concluded it was "pathetic" that the practice wickets were not covered more quickly when it rained on Wednesday.

When asked if Pietersen crossed the line Strauss said: "No he didn't. There are kinds of degrees of everything and we don't want anything that distracts our attention from what is important, which is getting on the cricket pitch and performing."

Pietersen vented after missing out on a long bat by tweeting: "What should a groundsman make sure he does two days out from a Test match?" He followed it with: "Cover the nets when it rains maybe?" His final comment on the subject was: "Pathetic!"

Pietersen's most famous explosive tweet came after he was dropped from the limited-overs sides in August and the incident resulted in England introducing specific regulations for micro-blogging. "We have got a set of guidelines for our players and we fully expect them to adhere to those guidelines as much as possible," Strauss said.

Strauss is not a tweeter but is happy for his team-mates to embrace the format to connect with their supporters. "I wouldn't prefer all of our players to be exactly like me, it would be a pretty boring dressing room," he said. "Everyone is different and a lot of the guys really enjoy it. And it is a good way of broadening the appeal of the game, there is no doubt about it.

"But it has to be used responsibly and by and large it has been. We have to make sure that we don't have any more incidences of the likes of what we have seen previously."