Picture Credit: Twitter
Former England captain Kevin Pietersen has lashed out at football fans for being involved in yet another ugly brawl between two separate fan bases. His reaction came on social media. KP drew the parallel between football fans and cricket and rugby fans by saying that even the fans of these two sports are passionate and emotional but they do not usually resort to violent or aggressive behaviour in or outside the cricket field. However, there have been numerous instances of fans losing their cool during or after football matches.
While a video doing the rounds on the internet said, "NEW: Another angle of Manchester United and Leeds fans kicking off," while sharing a video of groups of people fighting, Pietersen simply wrote, "Why don’t you see this at cricket & rugby? Those fans are also incredibly passionate and emotional, but just don’t carry on like this????"
Check out his Tweet here:
The video seems to be from outside Old Trafford where the Red Devils are displaying a superior brand of football against Leeds United and have already netted five goals in contrast to their 1.
Pietersen, a veteran of 104 Test matches for the Three Lions, urged Tom Banton not to "waste his talent" and learn from the likes of Indian batters Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma on how to construct a white-ball innings at the top of the order. His remark came after Banton reached 30 just twice in seven innings opening the batting for Welsh Fire in The Hundred. The former Delhi Daredevils skippers feels he is just trying to score too many sixes.
"He needs to rework the way he goes about his batting. There is a big psychological change that needs to happen there," he said on Sky Sports.
"He has all the talent but at the moment he is wasting it. He hits way too many balls in the air. He needs to learn to hit the ball along the ground, learn to hit extra-cover hard, mid-wicket hard," he added.
"You have to look at the best players around the world. How often do they think, 'let me just hit it in the air, my release shot is a six'? Virat Kohli, David Warner - look at all the players starring at the top of the innings. They hit extra-cover on the ground for four. How often do you see Kohli hitting sixes all over at the start of his innings?"