Kevin Pietersen interview: Best cricketers do not spend all day playing golf

“Life is good,” declares Kevin Pietersen. It is a verdict hard to dispute given Pietersen’s early summer plans. While a mentor for Delhi Capitals in the Indian Premier League, Pietersen is also permitted time off. When we chat, he is on holiday in the Maldives, before returning to India for another stint.

“I absolutely love it,” Pietersen declares of his first foray into coaching. “I love working with the players. I love spending time in the dressing room.”

Should England seek to use his expertise at any level, Pietersen would be eager to help. “I’ve always been available to Rob Key. He knows that.”

“I would still love to bat,” he adds. “But I absolutely love coaching and have that absolute desire and hunger to win and to try to make our players the best players they can be – mentally, technically and physically. It’s a game-changer, because it’s very easy sitting in the commentary box and watching cricket from afar and critiquing.”

It was Pietersen’s critique that caused a stir during his last stint in India. As a commentator in February, he attacked England’s attitude to training and penchant for golf. “I’m sorry, but you can’t come into the subcontinent, keep making the same mistakes, and then decide ‘I’m not going to practise’.”

Two months on, Pietersen’s view has not changed. “I stand by every word,” he reflects. “That was absolutely disgraceful that England did not train once between the first one-dayer and the last one-dayer – absolutely disgraceful.”

Pietersen’s comments were specific to the tour of India, when England lost the T20 series 4-1 and the ODIs 3-0. “I don’t know what they do – I just saw two weeks, where I was very unimpressed,” Pietersen says. Wryly, he observes how England subsequently emphasised their training regime during the Champions Trophy campaign. “England cricket social media was abuzz with practice once me and Ravi Shastri went at them for not training.”

‘Guys don’t go and play golf every day and go and wing it’

Working with Delhi Capitals, the early leaders in this IPL season, has emphasised to Pietersen how players prepare for matches.

“Guys don’t go and play golf every day and go and wing it – absolutely not, absolutely not. These guys are so meticulous in their preparation. They’re like surgeons. They really are super impressive.

“You do not become successful without hard work. You don’t become successful without practising – you become constant. You have to make sure you have the technical ability to manage at the top level. These guys are so smart. I sit in on our batting and bowling meetings, with people like KL Rahul, Faf du Plessis and Mitchell Starc. Some stuff that comes out of these guys’ mouths makes you just think: ‘You have to have your wits about you, to be able to cope at the top level.’

“A swing and a hit and a giggle is going to be successful once in a little while. But if you want to be consistent, you’re going to have to have some wits about you, because these guys are very, very astute, very smart and hard working.”

The coaches that Pietersen most enjoyed working with during his own career – Duncan Fletcher, Graham Ford and Clive Rice – all shared a great focus on the fundamentals of batting. He mocks the notion that international players do not need to focus much on technique.

“Complete and utter rubbish. Whoever said that has got absolutely no idea and is winging it. Mitchell Starc – 35 years of age, as fit as a fiddle. He talks about his body weight, what he eats, the sessions that he does. He is the consummate professional. Axar Patel, who has destroyed England’s batting order for a very long time – the practice, the thinking, the communication, everything goes into making him successful.

“There has to be technique. You can’t go through an international career not watching your technique. You have a look at the great players that are on our side at the moment, and how they talk about cricket and how they base everything around technique and the way they think.”

He notes how Sunrisers Hyderabad, hyped for their big-hitting approach, have lost four of their first six matches.

“Sunrisers probably play very similar to England, where they’re just trying to hit a six every single ball.

“With other teams – yes, absolutely, there is that intent. But you’ve got to be smart. You have to have cricket smarts. So understanding wickets, understanding opposition, playing in a certain way, all of these things blend into an all-round team. You cannot be one-dimensional. Being one-dimensional, you’re going to lose.”

Talking to Pietersen is a reminder of how much, for all the controversy in his career, he simply relished the art of batting. His autobiography, for instance, recounts an email from Rahul Dravid that helped him to fix his issues against left-arm spin.

He was particularly relishing working with Harry Brook, who idolised Pietersen when he was growing up. But Brook’s late withdrawal from his Delhi Capitals contract, and subsequent ban from the next two years of the IPL, means that Pietersen will not get that opportunity with England’s new white-ball captain.

“We were disappointed that he didn’t turn up. But those are his decisions. He’s got a big, big job now,” says Pietersen.

“I watched him when he played for the Northern Superchargers. I saw a couple of his shots, and I immediately saw superstardom. I love watching him bat. And there is a part of me that’s gutted that he isn’t with us at Delhi Capitals.”

On England’s white-ball tour of India this year, Pietersen observed Brook’s travails against spin.

“Watching him play spin on the last tour, he clearly has some faults which can be corrected with a few technical changes,” Pietersen explains. “I absolutely love talking about batting. And so it was something I was looking forward to with Harry.

“He’s such a good player, but there are technical flaws in his playing of spin which need to be fixed. A lot of Western batsmen, a lot of guys from England, South Africa, Australia, have the same issues. There’s just a lot of technical things that can change – drills that you can do. I mean, look at Joe Root. He is probably one of the best players of spin in the world, because technically he is so sound. And that’s something that I would love to have worked with Harry Brook on.”

Brook’s specific issue against spin, Pietersen believes, is rooted in his footwork. “A lot of guys that plant their front foot and play with their hands feel rushed,” he says. “It’s about picking length.

“There’s a few drills that you can do which help you pick length, which we’ve been doing over the last couple of weeks with a couple of our batters.

“There are certain techniques that you put into your practice that help you play the ball late. I’m not a believer in telling somebody ‘play the ball late’ or ‘stop planting your front foot’. I’m a firm believer in giving them the how, not the why, just this is the how, and let’s go and spend hours and hours drilling it.”

Such enthusiasm, you sense, would equip Pietersen to continue his coaching journey. He was personally involved in advising Kiran Kumar Grandhi, the chairman of the Delhi Capitals, in his recent purchase of stakes in both Hampshire and Southern Brave. It is widely thought that Pietersen will be involved in Southern Brave’s coaching staff in 2026 – quite possibly as head coach.

“I’ll see how I go. But everything that’s happening in England with the Southern Brave and that deal – there will be opportunities.”

This English summer, Pietersen the player will become the subject of new attention. Every week will bring new 20th anniversaries from the extraordinary summer of 2005: when Pietersen made his Test debut, and then played one of England’s greatest innings in the final Test.

‘It still resonates around the world as the greatest Test series that’s ever been played’

“It doesn’t feel that long ago. That Test series still resonates around the world as the greatest Test series that’s ever been played. It was amazing being a part of that. It was a very special bunch of players on both sides.”

For Pietersen himself, the personal pressure of the contest was less than he had faced earlier in the year, when vilified by South African crowds during England’s one-day international tour. He responded with three centuries in six innings.

“I was the pantomime villain,” Pietersen recalls. “For me, a South African, that was the toughest tour that I was ever going to have. Any Ashes battle that I ever had was almost insignificant compared to what I had to face on and off the field in South Africa over that three-week period.

“All the Ashes stuff was nowhere near as difficult as what I had to endure being chucked in the deep end. That made my ride in international cricket a lot easier, having success on that tour.”

Whether slog-sweeping Shane Warne, having the audacity to use his feet to Glenn McGrath, or hooking Brett Lee incessantly after lunch on day five at The Oval, Pietersen says that his approach was the same. “See ball, hit ball. I never played the man. I played the ball. Very simple – never ever played the man. I just played the ball. What I saw, I played.”

It would be easy to view Pietersen’s elan that summer as Bazball before Bazball. Pietersen himself does not agree. Indeed, his Test career strike rate of 62 indicates a batsman who, for all the pyrotechnics, was adaptable too.

“I didn’t go out and swing and do crazy things. I was very attacking. I was very methodical. I played situations,” he says. “There were rare occasions that I was being ultra aggressive, trying to attack and just play the way that the team required me to play. But there was a lot of method in my madness. Sometimes, in this new set-up, I don’t see method. I just see madness.”