Kevin Pietersen relishing his success against Pakistan

Aggressive English batsman Kevin Pietersen has termed his ton in the fourth game against Pakistan as his best one-day knock.

The right-hander also described that his extreme hard work with the bowling coach Mushtaq Ahmed helped him iron out his flaws against spin bowling.

Pietersen was struggling against slow bowlers over the last few months. In the Test series against Team Green, he was unable to play a big innings.

However, the South African-born batsman regained his form in the ODIs, scoring back to back tons in the last two encounters.

In the final game on Tuesday, he was a delight to watch, playing a match winning innings of 130 runs. His superb innings guided England to 4-0 clean-sweep in the series.

The jubilant batsman said, "I am allowed to say it was probably the best one I’ve played. The hard work I’ve been putting in with Mushy has paid off. I’ve spent hours and hours with him. I came in early today, early the other day (to practise)."

He added, "I like to really calm things down and just watch the ball and play it. I thought that the total they had, if I batted for 50 overs and took the game deep and batted with a bit of experience, we could come close. I just wanted to take the game
deep, and I wanted to target bowlers as well. I think that was the key to the success. You need experience, lots of it, in order to keep the situation very simple – and back your ability."

Despite being in sublime form, Pietersen is ready to be complacent. He was not reluctant to admit that he still has a lot to learn in order to stay consistent at the highest level of the game.

"You need a lot of confidence in your ability. I am not the finished article by any stretch of the imagination. But wow, I thoroughly enjoyed it (the innings)," shared the swashbuckling batsman.

After sealing an emphatic win in the ODIs, England’s next objective is to do equally well in the T20 leg of the series. The two teams are scheduled to meet in three T20s with the opening game to be played on Thursday.

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Posted by Rana Nasir Ghafoor on Feb 23 2012. Filed under Pakistan, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry