Australian cricket captain Ricky Ponting has said that he will target England batsmen Kevin Pietersen and Alistair Cook during the forthcoming Ashes series, as he sees them as the weak link in that line-up.
Paul Collingwood on Monday admitted that English players' non-availability for the whole IPL-IV played a big part in their snubbing by the team owners during the two-day auction in Bangalore.
# The second wicket partnership of 94 runs between Craig Kieswetter and Kevin Pietersen is Engalnd's best for any wicket against South Africa in the World Cup, obliterating the 55-run partnership between Matt Prior and Owais Shah for the fourth wicket at Cape Town on September 16, 2007.
Struggling with his form, a downcast Australian skipper Ricky Ponting on Tuesday crashed out of top 20 Test batsmen list for the first time in nearly a decade in the latest ICC ranking.
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.
England's Kevin Pietersen is a past master at batting in top gear but it was learning to shift down that helped him end a long lean spell with a double century in the second Ashes Test on Sunday.
The series win in Australia shows India will be a difficult team to beat and England will have to be at the top of their game to outwit the hosts in the upcoming four-match Test series, coach Chris Silverwood said on Tuesday.
Craig Kieswetter scored a cracking half-century as England thrashed Australia by seven wickets to win the ICC World Twenty20 in Barbados, on Sunday. The wicketkeeper-batsman, later named man of the match, smashed 63 from 49 balls, with the help of seven boundaries and two sixes, and added 111 runs in 68 balls for the second wicket with Pietersen, who scored 47 from 31 balls, to help England secure their first global trophy.
Australia batsman Usman Khawaja is likely to replace injured Kevin Pietersen in the squad of Rising Pune Supergiants in season 9 of Indian Premier League. Pietersen was ruled out of the IPL on Sunday, leaving the subcontinent with a hole in his calf muscle and in Pune's batting order. If picked, this will be Khawaja's maiden IPL stint. The left-handed top-order batsman had gone unsold at IPL auctions in February despite scoring heavily in Australia's domestic circuit. Pune have not named a replacement for KP, but Khawaja is the one of the frontrunners, according to Supergiants coach Stephen Fleming. "He (Khawaja) is a guy we are surely looking at," Fleming said after the two-wicket loss to Kolkata on Sunday.
Even imagined Jacques Kallis and Kevin Pietersen batting together? On Sunday, they did, for the Royal Challengers, but without much success.
England coach Andy Flower, has said that he believed that the comment posted by Kevin Pietersen on micro-blogging site Twitter was a genuine mistake.
England's Kevin Pietersen is set to play for South African franchise the Kwa-Zulu Natal (KZN) Dolphins in October in a bid to find his form before the Ashes tour later this year.
Check out the Sunrisers Hyderabad squad for the eighth edition of the Indian Premier League.
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.
Durham pace bowler Graham Onions has been added to England's squad as they bid to win the Ashes series outright in the fourth Test at his Chester-le-Street home ground from Friday.
Yuvraj Singh, Ishant Sharma and Kevin Pietersen will be among the eight marquee players up for grabs at the IPL 2016 Player Auction scheduled to take place, in Bengaluru, on February 6.
Trott made a patient half-century to help England recover from two quick blows and reach 171 for three in reply to Bangladesh's 419 on the second day of the second Test on Sunday.
India skipper Virat Kohli rejected criticism of the spin-friendly Chepauk pitch, asserting that his side showed the requisite grit and determination to conquer England on it in the second Test, the toss not a matter of concern at all.
KKR have plenty of resources in bowling but Karthik, it seems, has not been able to manage them well
Former Essex player Ian Pont, who is now engaged in coaching Indian bowlers in Bangalore, shares his views on the fallout-out from the Kevin Pietersen's tell-all book with Rediff.com's Manu Shankar.
Former Australian captain Ian Chappell believes India skipper Virat Kohli's penchant for playing copybook cricketing shots and his incredible fitness make him the world's best batsman across formats among the current generation of cricketers. Kohli, who has scored 70 international hundreds and more than 20,000 runs, averages more than 50 in all three formats.
England registered an emphatic 161-run victory over Zimbabwe in the second ODI to go up 2-0 up in the four-match series.
Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood scored half centuries as England went to tea on 194 for 3 in the first Ashes Test after Australia took three wickets in the morning session.
'We know that he's a quality player and there's a good innings around the corner for him. He has been given the extra burden of being captain and that can be tough and something he's not used to.'
Reduced to a mere spectator due to an Achilles' injury, explosive batsman Kevin Pietersen said it was frustrating and "nerve-wracking" to watch England's Ashes triumph from the sidelines.
Ian Bell will replace injured Kevin Pietersen at number four in the England batting order in this week's third Ashes Test against Australia, captain Andrew Strauss said on Monday.
Ian Bell will replace injured Kevin Pietersen at number four in the England batting order in this week's third Ashes Test against Australia, captain Andrew Strauss said on Monday. Strauss also expects paceman Andrew Flintoff to be available after he bowled England to a victory in the second Test at Lord's despite a painful knee.
Mumbai Indians scored a 15-run victory over Delhi Daredevils in a must-win match at the Wankhede stadium in Mumbai, on Friday, to stay in the hunt for a play-off berth in the Indian Premier League. They squandered an electrifying start from openers Michael Hussey and Lendl Simmons, losing their last eight wickets for 33 runs before being dismissed for 173 runs in 19.3 overs, but did well to restrict Delhi to just 158.
Rajneesh Gupta on the Delhi Capitals's IPL record.
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.
The induction of England batsman Kevin Pietersen and New Zealand's Jesse Ryder, besides Banaglore lad Robin Uthappa, has helped Indian Premier League franchise Bangalore Royal Challengers shed its tag of 'Test outfit' in Twenty20 cricket, says team owner Vijay Mallya. 'Last year our team was called a Test team, but with players such as (Kevin) Pietersen, (Robin) Uthappa and (Jesse) Ryder in the squad now, no one calls it a Test team anymore,' Mallya said.
Memorable moments from Shane Warne's glittering career.
Newly appointed Test captain Andrew Strauss was Friday also given the job of one-day skipper, even though he had not been initially included in the squad for the forthcoming West Indies tour.
England should instead celebrate the fact that, among all speculation, intimation and finally confirmation, Kevin Pietersen made it absolutely clear that he wants to carry on as a player.
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.
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.
Kohli said for such a policy to succeed, a solid bench strength is paramount.
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 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.
The viability of star English players Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff in the February 6 auction might be jeopardised because of the fact that the players have been allowed only a limited period of time to take part in the Indian Premier League, according to reports in London.
