Ashes 2023: Pietersen makes brutal assessment on England’s pace attack

Comparing the English bowlers with former stars Mitchell Johnson and Shoaib Akhtar, he says the former had more fire in terms of pace. Adding more, he said that if anyone could create a similar impact, it would be Mark Wood, who is not part of the Edgbaston Test.

Pietersen observed while discussing Travis Head’s problems in dealing with the short deliveries.

“There’s a reason why the bowlers targeted in there (short deliveries) because we do feel, well everybody feels he (Travis Head) has an issue. And I don’t mean to be disrespectful at all to the single bowling lineup but they’re (England pacers) not to be feared. And I’ll say that from a pace-wise perspective where you’ve got guys bowling at 80 miles an hour, 83 miles an hour. You don’t have Mitchell Johnson running in at 95 or Shoaib Akhtar, or even Woody (Mark Wood). Woody will run in and he will test you?” HT quoted Pietersen saying during an interaction on Sky Sports.

“So you need to have your wits about you when it comes to that instinctive way of playing. Whereas against (Stuart) Broad at 82-83 and (Ollie) Robinson at 80-82. I’m sorry the way that he played it wasn’t as good as he should be playing it and absolutely no way. So it’s a problem and when you get targeted with a short ball, it rocks your foundations as a batter.”

Justifying his statement, the former England player cited the example of his former colleague Jonathan Trott.

“I remember that with Jonathan Trott when Jonathan went through that period batting a three with us and everybody started to go short to him, it rocked his foundations as a batter. So it’s an issue for Head,” he added.

Now looking at the scorecard, batting first, England scored 393/8 and declared, while Australis scored 386 and were all out. England scored 273 in the second innings, and now Australians need 255 runs to win the test.

Updated: 19 Jun 2023, 11:36 PM IST