England could miss Kevin Pietersen despite victories

England have sealed four consecutive triumphs since Kevin Pietersen’s retirement from limited-over cricket, but Australia’s head-coach Mickey Arthur feels that could yet miss their superstar batsman.

The South Africa-born batsman decided to quit One Day Internationals a few weeks ago, saying that it is hard to survive in such hectic international schedule.

England recalled Ian Bell as replacement for the big man and the classy right-hander has been performing brilliantly so far. The Englishmen are 2-0 up in the series against Australia and Arthur believes that Poms could still miss Pietersen, who had been
England’s most prolific run-scorer over the years.

"Kevin’s a world-class player; there’s certainly no getting away from that. He’s been fantastic, so it would have been an interesting selection poser.  You would say they’ve gone seemingly well without him, because I don’t think they’ve lost an ODI since
he’s gone,” Arthur said.

He added, “But down the line, I think, they might feel the weight of that decision, because he is a class act – and he was playing very, very well as well before it ended for him. At the moment, they’re not missing him but down the line, not sure."

The Australian coach was not reluctant to lavish praise on the English side, adding that the Poms have been playing very good cricket over the past few years. He explained that the English team has become a fine combination especially with a good spinner.

He uttered, "I think they’re playing really well. They’re playing a very good brand of cricket. I think in English conditions, they’ve almost gone back to the old sort of format of one-day cricket – three proper Test players at the top of the order, four
out-and-out pace bowlers, a really good spinner."

"They’re playing with their specialists; they’re playing the one-day game with their best players. In England, I think that’s a message for every other team, bearing in mind we come back here for the Champions Trophy [next year]."

He also backed Australia to improve their game after a couple of embarrassing defeats at the hands of England. He opined that there are plenty of good players in the Australia team and they just need to get their performance right in order to produce better
results.

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Posted by Rana Nasir Ghafoor on Jul 3 2012. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry