Insecurity makes KP lose his swagger
Kevin Pietersen has cut a detached and perturbed figure through campaigns on three different continents and all he has had to show for it is a one-day trophy for beating Sri Lanka and a batting average slumming it in the low thirties, writes Simon
Kanishkaa Balachandran
25-Feb-2013
Kevin Pietersen has cut a detached and perturbed figure through campaigns on three different continents and all he has had to show for it is a one-day trophy for beating Sri Lanka and a batting average slumming it in the low thirties, writes Simon Wilde in the Times.
External factors may have contributed to his mood. Tours of Sri Lanka and New Zealand may not be ones to get his creative juices flowing. He prefers the really big stages and the really big needle matches. His record against Australia is outstanding and it is hard to imagine him staying in the shadows come the series against South Africa this summer.
Vic Marks, in the Guardian, writes that England's bowlers have lacked steam at Hamilton, especially Steve Harmison and Matthew Hoggard. The faster they ran in, the slower the ball departed down the sluggish pitch. Ryan Sidebottom, who lacks their pedigree, outbowled them by a disturbing margin.
Arnie, Ryan's father and a one-Test-wonder, popped up to the Test Match Special box yesterday, the right sort of proud dad. He has kept out of the way for most of Ryan's career; this was the first time he had seen him bowl in a Test match. Cheerful as ever he noted how "Mr Fletcher always wanted bowlers who bowled at more than 85mph. What he forgot to tell them was that they had to bowl at the stumps as well".
Kanishkaa Balachandran is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo