At the start of this month, a tweet on Kevin Pietersen’s Twitter timeline took everyone by surprise as he declared that he will be skipping the upcoming edition of Indian Premier League (IPL), the most elusive T20 league in the world cricket at present.
The surprising moment came when Pietersen agreed to play the Pakistan Super League but not the IPL. There was another angle to this as a slump in his form was thought to be the reason why he backed out from the league but on February 18 in the PSL game, playing for Quetta Gladiators against Lahore Qalandars, he sailed his team to a win by playing an innings of 88*.
Right after this innings, questions were raised if KP is looking to add his name to the IPL auction list but he once again cleared the rumour and said that he has no plans to play this year’s IPL,
“No mate, I’m done. I’m going to play the next week or so and then I’m done. No, I’ll think about what I’ll do in the summer but at the moment I need to spend time with my family and kids.
“Cricket is not everything to me. I’ve got a young family and your family only grows up once. If I’m going to spend two months away from my daughter who’s one year old, no, not interested,” he said.
“No one deserves success in life. You’ve got to work for it, you’ve got to enjoy it, and in life and in sport you have more bad days than you have good days and I’ve just proved that. It doesn’t mean I’m going to get runs for the rest of the tournament but it’s nice that we’ve got a victory,” Pietersen added further.
KP was going through a rough form as he had just scored three runs in the same number of innings he played before this great knock. Skipper Sarfraz Ahmed will hope of the same kind of show from Pietersen as he has been given enough chances in the tournament despite failing at the start and now it’s the payback time for Pietersen and contribute to the team to the best of his ability.
Quetta Gladiators will play its next match against Islamabad United on February 23.