Will Pietersen's travails continue?
Kevin Pietersen has been dismissed 19 times by left-arm spinners in Test cricket - including falling to Rangana Herath in the first Test in Cardiff
Akhila Ranganna
25-Feb-2013
Kevin Pietersen has been dismissed 19 times by left-arm spinners in Test cricket - including falling to Rangana Herath in the first Test in Cardiff. And Sri Lanka will advertise the drama of one man's battle for self-belief by giving their spinner the ball as soon as Pietersen comes in at Lord's writes James Lawton in the Independent.
After the Cardiff denouement, Pietersen seemed almost to be in denial, slipping lightly over his problem while preferring to speak of the pleasure that fills the heart of every member of the England team when a colleague performs stupendously. It is a joy, Pietersen went on, enhanced by the certainty that if it is Trott or Cook today, there is every chance that it will be you tomorrow. Maybe it is so, maybe not.
In the Daily Telegraph, Michael Vaughan identifies the root of Pietersen's woes against left-arm spin - the positioning of his hips when he fronts up to play the ball.
[Pietersen] is not an orthodox technician but when he played in Bangladesh last year, and scored a Test match 99 against decent left-arm spinners on turning pitches, I felt he was aligning his hips to hit the ball through extra cover and mid-off rather than through midwicket, as he did in Cardiff. If you draw a line through the hips you want them going towards the non-striker at other end, but at the moment his hips are in line with midwicket. If your hips are not aligned straight you play more with your hands and your reach. The legs and feet follow so if the hips are in line everything else will go in the right direction.
Akhila Ranganna is assistant editor (Audio) at ESPNcricinfo