Picture Credit: Twitter
Former England batter and cricket commentator Kevin Pietersen has left the commentary team for the remainder of the Indian Premier League. The South African born joined the IPL broadcast team on 19 April for the game between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Lucknow Super Giants.
Pietersen announced his departure via Twitter as he posted, “? back home! Thanks again, India. It’s always so special to be here! ??”. Like every season, KP has been a delight for the fans with his witty remarks with insightful analysis. Recently, during the Mumbai Indians vs Gujarat Titans match, he talked about how the Titans’ poor decision could lead to the formation of negative thoughts in the squad especially after losing to the bottom-placed team.
“It's a marathon, not a sprint,” Pietersen
KP said, "Yeah, Daniel Sams would have thought he has no chance because of what Rahul Tewatia and David Miller have done in this year's IPL. But when you go and mess around with a game like the guys did at the DY Patil. We were there the other night and they chose to change things around because hey let's change things around because we have enough points.”
“At the start of the tournament, they would not have thought that they would be in this position but they have built this position, negative thoughts that they would have had six weeks ago, well I can tell you something right now, You lose a nail-bitter like tonight, you lose a game because of bit of a poor decision the other evening, what starts to happen in the dressing room?”
That negativity starts to seep in that room because you just start thinking at the big periods in the game, are we now getting it right or are we getting it wrong? It's a marathon, not a sprint. You want to be playing your best cricket now and winning your games now," he added.
“You can't keep losing back-to-back wickets,” Pandya
Gujarat Titans captain Hardik Pandya also addressed the team’s poor decision making in the last over. He said, We'll take 9 runs in the last over on any given day, but the two run-outs didn't help us.”
“In T20 cricket you can't keep losing back-to-back wickets, it pushes you back. It's one of the games where we ended on the losing side. We kind of played 19.2 or 19.3 overs of good cricket, but losing wickets didn't help us like I said before,” he added.