Kevin Pietersen: I’ll give England Test batsmen Ashes pointers

Kevin Pietersen has already had conversations with the new Test head coach Stephen Fleming about helping England’s batsmen to prepare for next summer’s Ashes.

Pietersen has been working as a specialist mentor to the white-ball teams coached by Brendon McCullum, and four of the top five batsmen in the first-choice one-day international line-up — Ben Duckett, Joe Root, Harry Brook and Jacob Bethell — are also Test players.

Although Pietersen will not, as it stands, be part of England’s coaching staff for the Ashes, Fleming has spoken to him about common themes between the two teams. One of Pietersen’s spells as a consultant will be for the ODI and T20 series in Australia in November and December, which come before the three Tests in South Africa.

“I’ve had a conversation with Stephen Fleming,” Pietersen said. “I don’t think that necessarily means that I need to be in a dressing room, but there’s a lot of time in the lead-up to an Ashes series. There’s a lot of time in the lead-up to the tour of South Africa where I’m going to be with the Test players, the Test batters in Australia, and there’s conversations that can be had there.

“I’ve certainly had conversations with Flem, who I absolutely love, about language that he would like me to use with the Test batters, going into South Africa, and then certainly into the summer next year.”

Pietersen is working with the ODI team, who face a series decider against Sri Lanka at the Kia Oval on Sunday after losing a dramatic second match at Headingley on Thursday, in which Jos Buttler sustained a hamstring injury having looked set to bat England to victory. Pietersen is relishing his return to the England dressing room, 12 years after his international career ended in controversy after the 2013-14 Ashes series, when he was sacked for not giving full support to the team.

In recent times he has been a critical observer of McCullum’s set-up, notably saying he was “gobsmacked” at their minimal preparations during a white-ball tour to India last year, so he was not expecting the approach from the head coach.

“I thought I was in trouble; why is he calling me, have I said something?” Pietersen said. “So I was surprised when he said, ‘I want you to come and join us in the dressing room, we want to work over the next 12 months to be competitive in South Africa [at the World Cup] next year.’

“We talked about how critical I had been of the set-up. It took a couple of weeks of conversations to convince me it was something I wanted to do.

“The perception I had before I got asked to do the job was completely different to the reality of what I feel now being inside the [dressing] rooms. These guys are really, really driven, they’re eager to learn. It’s nice to be part of an England team and a set-up that is actually really driven.”

Given the acrimony that accompanied the end of Pietersen’s England career, it has surprised many people that he has agreed to work for the ECB again. Asked what he would have said ten years ago about the prospect, he said with a smile: “What do you reckon I’d have said? I’m 46, man, that stuff’s long gone, I’m a completely different person.

“The cool thing is doing the stuff that I actually really enjoyed, working with the youngsters, working with Joe [Root], me and him loved batting together. So for my career to be cut short in the way it was, to be in this position now where I don’t have to go out and bat, I don’t have to worry about the headlines, I can actually try and help these guys become better players, and hand over quite a bit of information, that’s the thing that really excites me.”

The tumultuous nature of Pietersen’s career means that he feels he has a broad range of experiences he can pass on to the new generation. “I’m just here to help Brendon and to help the players become the best versions of themselves,” he said. “I’ve been lucky to have worn every T-shirt an England cricketer can wear — the good, the bad, and the ugly. There are parts to all of their careers, which I think that I could potentially help them to stay away from the ugly.”

Pietersen has stressed that his role is as a consultant, rather than any permanent attachment to the coaching team, but McCullum has engaged him primarily to help with the build-up to the ODI World Cup in southern Africa in October and November next year. He has other interests, working in animal conservation, cricket commentary and filming for a YouTube channel, and he spends a lot of time in his native South Africa.

“With the World Cup being in South Africa, and how close I am to that environment, I think I’ll be able to assist in many ways,” he said. “We’ve got 12 months to plan, to learn, to win, to learn from losing. To be in the best shape possible for us to know that if something like [the injury] happens to Jos, in [a knockout] round in South Africa, that somebody can step up into Jos’s boots. You want to trust many players in those positions.”

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