English cricket fraternity was on Thursday unanimous in blaming Kevin Pietersen for putting the country's cricket in a mess by poor management of his sour relationship as captain with coach Peter Moores which cost the two their positions in the team.
English cricket plunged into deep crisis with coach Peter Moores also resigning.
England cricket could find itself in the doldrums with a report claiming that captain Kevin Pietersen is threatening to resign over the non-inclusion of former skipper Michael Vaughan in the squad for this month's tour of the West Indies.
149 - Runs added by Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff, recording a highest fifth-wicket partnership at Mohali.
The 29-year-old right-hander was ruled out of the remainder of the Ashes series following an operation on his troublesome Achilles tendon injury on Wednesday, which is expected to take six weeks to heal.
Andrew Flintoff fears Kevin Pietersen's absence for the remaining three Tests against Australia could wreck England's chances of regaining the Ashes.
England batsman Kevin Pietersen will visit medical specialists this week to assess if he will be fit for the third Ashes Test against Australia starting at Edgbaston in Birmingham on July 30.
England captain Kevin Pietersen revealed he played the Chennai Test with a fractured rib and oozed confidence of playing the Mohali Test as well despite the injury. 'I have got a fractured rib,' Pietersen told The Guardian. 'There are no dramas. I will deal with it. I don't like injections. I will just take painkillers,' said the England skipper, insisting he would play the second and final Test in Mohali starting Friday.
Virender Sehwag's blistering knock swung the match but it was Sachin Tendulkar's sedate century which took it away from England, rued visiting captain Kevin Pietersen.
England spin bowler Graeme Swann has admitted that some of the Ashes winning heroes may have urinated on The Oval pitch during late night celebrations to 'answer a call of nature' even as a regretful ECB has decided against taking any public action.
Australia reduced England to 169 for seven at tea in their second innings on the final day of the first Ashes Test in Cardiff on Sunday during an attritional afternoon session. Paul Collingwood fought a dour, rearguard act to reach 55 not out after more than four hours at the crease but at the interval England still trailed by 70 on the first innings with 34 overs remaining.
Barely a day after England's tour of India to play two Test matches got final clearance, the first batch of cricketers landed in Chennai on Monday evening amid tight security.
England have rested Alastair Cook, James Anderson, Ian Bell, Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann for the five-match One-Day International series against Australia next month.
England captain Kevin Pietersen said on Thursday he was confident that his team would travel to India for next week's first Test in Chennai despite the recent atrocities in the country.
Captaincy had bogged down fiery English batsman Kevin Pietersen to such an extent that he now equates the job to facing an oncoming train and says it gets worse when the team performs badly.
Professional Cricketers Association chief executive Sean Morris will meet England captain Kevin Pietersen and the rest of the team when they come to Heathrow on Saturday evening with the message that 'cricket is no longer at the top of the agenda'. 'We will sit down with the players and discuss the situation. We can't make any decisions at this stage,' Morris said.
India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni won the toss and elected to field against England in the fifth One-Day International at the Barabati stadium in Cuttack on Wednesday. India brought in left-arm pacer Irfan Pathan in place of Munaf Patel and Rohit Sharma replaced the in-form Gautam Gambhir.
Former India wicketkeeper Farokh Engineer lashed out at match referee Roshan Mahanama, saying his lack of "common sense" resulted in the third One-Day International between India and England at Kanpur being decided by the Duckworth/Lewis system. 'Kanpur has good (floodlights) lights and they should have been used,' he said.
Former England captain Mike Atherton has blamed Kevin Pietersen's dangerously indifferent and odd attitude towards spin bowling for his team's debacle in the one-day series against India so far and advised him to urgently change his mentality.
England captain Kevin Pietersen is considering changes to his line up for the third one-day international against India on Thursday, with bowlers Graeme Swann and Ryan Sidebottom both in contention.
England batsman Kevin Pietersen, who was out for a second ball duck, threw beer over South African fans after they called him a 'knob'.
No stranger to pressure and expectations, Indian batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar says he can foresee a similar scenario for Kevin Pietersen during the Ashes and has advised the English swashbuckler not to think of the high hopes his nation has from him while batting.
England have omitted fast bowler James Anderson from the team to face the Stanford Superstars in Saturday's US $20 million match in Antigua. Anderson joins Alastair Cook, Ravi Bopara and Ryan Sidebottom as the players to miss out, with captain Kevin Pietersen opting to include spinner Graeme Swann alongside Nottinghamshire team mate Samit Patel.
England batsman Kevin Pietersen said he was almost back to his best form after recovering from an Achilles tendon injury.
Captain Ricky Ponting has dismissed talks of Australia being underprepared for the World Twenty20 Championships by missing the Indian Premier League (IPL) and said his side is instead "in the best shape" following the break before the big event. Ponting along with Michael Clarke and Mike Hussey, deliberately skipped IPL preferring rest ahead of a busy summer for them.
Delhi Daredevils' final IPL outing was as woeful as their opening one, with table-toppers Kings XI Punjab inflicting a seven-wicket defeat on the tournament's wooden spooners in Mohali on Sunday.
Hailing the Indian Premier League as a top-class tournament, hard-hitting West Indian batsman Chris Gayle credited the cash-rich Twenty20 annual event for Indian cricket's rise in different formats of the game.
England's new batting coach Graham Gooch has said that he expects star batsman Kevin Pietersen to be back to his best during the Test series against South Africa starting on December 16.
The second season of the Indian Premier League has been as much about ducks as it has been about runs.
Chennai Super Kings captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni on Monday lavished praise on retired Australian Matthew Hayden and Sri Lankan spin wizard Muttiah Muralitharan for their efforts in the 92-run win over Bangalore Royal Challengers in Port Elizabeth.
England batsman Kevin Pietersen, who had an operation on his Achilles and faced the last ball on July 18, is refreshed and will bat for the first time in three months.
Interestingly, Kevin Pietersen's debut as England captain comes against South Africa -- the country of his birth.
Former captains Andrew Flintoff and Andrew Strauss say Kevin Pietersen has the attributes to make a great leader.
Here is a list of players captaining Test teams despite being born in a different country.
England appointed Kevin Pietersen as their new captain on Monday following Michael Vaughan's resignation after the series loss to South Africa. Pietersen, 28, will lead England against his native country in the fourth Test against the South Africans starting at The Oval on Thursday.
West Indies cruised to a six wicket victory over England in a one-off Twenty20 international in Trinidad on Sunday. The hosts' excellent bowling and fielding restricted England to a modest 121 in 19.1 overs before Ramnaresh Sarwan's 59 put them in control and set up victory with two overs to spare.
Players around the world are getting jittery about playing in the Indian Premier League in the wake of the Lahore terror attack on the Sri Lankan team but Cricket South Africa on Monday said it has no objection in sending it's players for the Twenty20 tournament. The second edition of the cash-rich event is scheduled to kick off on April 10 in Mumbai.
Kevin Pietersen is likely to miss England's tour to South Africa this November, as his chances of becoming match fit are remote.
Spinner Graeme Swann reckons that the current England team would not be able to make it to the top honours of the upcoming Champions Trophy, and the maximum that they hope to achieve is to reach the semi-finals.
England batsman Kevin Pietersen has said that he is making a slow and steady recovery from the Achilles tendon surgery and is targeting a return to action during England's South Africa.
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