Sacked batsman Kevin Pietersen has put the blowtorch on Alastair Cook’s England, saying the team’s Test series defeat to Sri Lanka showed their senior players were still shell-shocked from the 5-0 Ashes whitewash.
Pietersen also heaped additional pressure on out-of-form skipper Cook, claiming his lack of runs was playing on his mind and making him appear a “rabbit in the headlights.”
“England were in winning positions in both matches, but blew it, and I believe that is a symptom of the senior players being very unsettled,” Pietersen, controversially dumped from the team in the wake of the Ashes debacle, wrote in his column in British newspaper, the Telegraph.
Photo: Reuters
“They are not turning up for the captain or coach. [Stuart] Broad and [James] Anderson looked jaded at Headingley,” the South Africa-born batsman said of the performance of England’s fast bowling duet in the second Test loss in Leeds.
“Why? Why was Jimmy so emotional? We have lost a lot of matches in the past, but he has never shown such emotion,” Pietersen said. “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 said “fear of failure” appeared to be influencing England and Cook’s tactics on field, as shown by the team’s late declaration in the first Test draw in Lord’s and the choice to bowl first at Headingley after winning the toss.
“You can only kid the public for so long,” he said. “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.”
Opening batsman Cook had been a “brilliant” player for England, but had few people in the dressing room to turn to help pull the team out of its funk, Pietersen added. “I saw in Cook at Headingley the same look [former captain] 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 34-year-old’s dissection came a day after former Australia spinner Shane Warne, a vocal critic of Cook’s captaincy and a former teammate of Pietersen at Hampshire, in the same newspaper urged the 29-year-old to either step down.
TITLE CAMPAIGN: The victory sent the Monkeys to the Taiwan Series for the third time in the past four seasons as they seek their first championship since 2019 The stage is set for the Taiwan Series after the Rakuten Monkeys on Monday beat the Uni-President Lions 4-3 in Game 5 of the CPBL Challenger Series in Kaohsiung. The Monkeys, who entered the top of the ninth scoreless, tied the game with a three-run blast by Lin Chih-ping and scored the winning run in the 10th on an RBI single by Lin Li, a three-time batting champion in the CPBL. Both players entered the game as pinch hitters. “The coach told me to stay prepared as a pinch hitter in the later part of the game. My teammates had
Taiwanese badminton ace Chou Tien-chen was crowned the men’s singles champion at the Arctic Open on Sunday, after defeating Kunlavut Vitidsarn of Thailand 21-11, 13-21, 21-19. The 35-year-old Chou, who is ranked world No. 5, and the 24-year-old Vitidsarn, ranked world No. 3, battled it out for one hour and 17 minutes in a grueling three-game match at Energia Areena in Vantaa, Finland. In the first game, Chou took an early 9-7 lead and maintained his momentum, widening the gap, before defeating Vitidsarn 21-11. At the start of the second game, the two players were neck-and-neck. When Vitidsarn pulled ahead
The Ministry of Sports on Wednesday night called for the Chinese Taipei Football Association (CTFA) to address issues in Taiwanese soccer after national manager Huang Che-ming on Tuesday resigned following Taiwan’s elimination in AFC Asian Cup qualifiers. Taiwan on Tuesday were thrashed 6-1 by Thailand in their Group D tie at Taipei Municipal Stadium. Taiwan finished with no points, after losing all four of their matches, eliminating them from qualifying for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup. Huang made his surprise resignation at a post-match news conference, following three losses since he took over the team from English coach Gary White in August. Huang
HIT AND RUN: Toronto manager John Schneider got his wish that his team ‘find some slug in the air out here,’ as the Blue Jays combined to total 611m of homers Tired in Toronto, the Blue Jays slugged in Seattle. Vladimir Guerrero Jr and George Springer on Wednesday woke up the Jays, as Toronto hit five home runs to rebound from an early deficit, routing the Mariners 13-4 and closing to 2-1 in the American League Championship Series (ALCS). Toronto had 18 hits — all within the first three pitches of each at-bat. “If they give us a first pitch, the pitch that we’re looking for, we’re going to attack and we’re going to be aggressive,” Guerrero said. Seattle starter George Kirby gave up eight of the hits. “I wasn’t really executing when they got
RSS