Kevin Pietersen reassures Andrew Strauss over ODI future
England’s middle order batsman Kevin Pietersen has reassured captain Andrew Strauss that he will not be bidding farewell to the 50-over format of the game after the 2011 World Cup. The tournament is set to begin from 19th February in the subcontinent,
jointly hosted by http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Sri-Lanka-c758 and Bangldesh.
Speaking to newsmen in Dhaka, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Bangladesh-c747, Strauss said, “Kevin (Pietersen) has denied those rumours.”
This statement by the English captain has come after there were rumours in the media that KP would be ending his stint in the One Day Internationals (ODI) to cut down his workload and focus on Test and Twenty20 cricket. KP was also reported to have favoured
playing in the lucrative India Premier League (IPL) after ditching the ODIs.
After these rumours surfaced, KP was forced to clarify that there was no truth to these claims. Using his Twitter page, Pietersen reached out to his fans and assured them that he was going to play 50-over cricket for http://www.senore.com/Cricket/England-c56013 irrespective of the team's performance
at the World Cup.
Speaking further on the matter, Strauss said, “You can understand a situation where players, at the back-end of their career, need to manage their workload and might decide one form of the game is more appropriate for them to keep playing than all of them.”
Giving the examples of other international players who have chosen to play in only selected formats of cricket, he pointed out that players like Australia’s Brett Lee and Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralithran were also not playing in all three formats of cricket
to prolong their careers.
The English captain himself has bid farewell to Twenty20 cricket and no longer takes part in that format of the game. He stressed that due to the heavy tournament schedules nowadays players have to take care of their fitness and devise ways to prolong their
careers, which can only be done by playing in selected formats of the game.
Many players are opting to play Twenty20 cricket because of its growing popularity all over the World. Recently many pace bowlers have taken retirement from Test cricket because of their age and stamina, which would no longer allow them to play in the five-day
game.
The workload on cricketers has also tremendously increased ever since the introduction of the IPL, which has attracted many players due to its lucrative nature. Now every player from the cricketing world wants to play in the event so they can earn more than
they do playing only for their national teams.
Tags: