Former English skipper, Kevin Pietersen has come forward and criticized ECB after Ben Stokes’ ODI retirement, stating he was not allowed to retire from just one format during his career. Pietersen had cited the same reason as Stokes for his retirement but ECB’s policies at the time had led to a different outcome. The problem of having jam-packed schedules has plagued the cricket community for years now and in 2012, Kevin Pietersen was forced to call time on his ODI career.
Kevin Pietersen had played 136 ODIs but being an all-format player was unable to keep going in all the formats and decided to qits from ODI, with the intention to participate in the T20 World Cup later that year. However, the England Cricket Board soon stated its policy barred players from having such autonomy, since the limited-overs formats need to be treated as a group.
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After Pietersen’s retirement, then-managing director of the ECB, Hugh Morris said, “As the programming and planning for ODI and T20 format cricket are very closely linked we have a selection policy that means that any player making himself unavailable for either of the one-day formats rules himself out of consideration for both formats. The selectors will now replace Kevin in both the ODI and the T20 squads.”
Commenting on Ben Stokes’ recent retirement from ODIs, Kevin Pietersen thus couldn’t help but recall the different treatment he had received for the exact same situation a decade ago.
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He tweeted, “I once said the schedule was horrendous and I couldn’t cope, so I retired from ODI cricket & the ECB banned me from T20s too………….”
https://twitter.com/KP24/status/1549367643265695744?s=20&t=JsFVxtERR0JN-c3v1F-OKQ
Ben Stokes is expected to be a crucial cog for England in the upcoming ICC T20 World Cup 2022 to be held in Australia in less than three months. He had missed the last edition due to hectic schedules but will be raring to go for his first ICC marquee event since the 2019 World Cup.
