With the tough tour of India just a few weeks away, former England batsman Kevin Pietersen has come up with a stern advice for the Aussie batsman. The right-handed batsman has told the Australian players to either learn to play spin quickly or skip the tour of India.
The visiting teams have struggled to cope up with the turning pitches in India in the last couple of decades and Australia’s track record in India is worse than the lot. Barring the 2004 Test series when Ricky Ponting’s men got the better of Sourav Ganguly’s men, the team from Down Under have found life tough in sub-continent. They were blanked 4-0 when they last visited India and Pietersen has advised Steven Smith’s men to either learn a way to tackle spin or stay at home.
“Learn to play spin very quick. If you can’t play spin, don’t even go,” Pietersen was quoted as saying in cricket.com.au.
Pietersen is one of the few visiting batsmen who have enjoyed a fruitful time in India. The former England batsman played an important role in his team’s historic series triumph in India four year ago. He scored 338 runs on that tour, including a majestic 186 in Mumbai that set the tone for the visitors to win the series 2-1, after losing the first match of the series.
“When you get there (India) you’ve got to practice it, and you can actually practice it here – I can do spinning drills in Australia, I did them … on a South African wicket to make sure that my feet were going and picking length,” Pietersen said.
“You can, you don’t need to be on a spinning wicket to play spin properly or practice spin, you can be on any type of wicket. It’s about picking length, and picking lines and getting your feet going,” he added.
Pietersen also offered some tips regarding footwork to Australian batsmen, who’ll be desperate to improve their team’s track record in sub-continent.
“As soon as you start planting like a lot of southern hemisphere batters do – dead,” Pietersen said. “Don’t plant your front foot. Wait for the ball, engage. Where is it? Pick it, and then play. (You have) plenty of time, if you can play somebody (bowling) at 150 (km/h) and get into good positions, (you can do it against) somebody bowling at 50 miles an hour. I always looked to score. I was always looking for a boundary every single ball. So I didn’t really change, it was just my feet that had to change.”
The four-match series will begin on February 23 in Pune.