Kevin Pietersen is back in England colours. Not out in the middle this time, but in the dressing room – and Joe Root insists this is a very different England to the one that cast Pietersen aside a decade ago.
The former superstar batter has been appointed as a mentor to England’s white-ball side in the build-up to the 2027 World Cup in South Africa, the country of his birth. It is a striking move, given how violently his international career ended, and Root sits at the heart of that contrast: the only current England player who shared a dressing room with Pietersen, and now captain of a side that has grown up in the shadow of his exile.
“I’m fortunate enough to be in that position where I did play alongside him,” Root told BBC Sport, reflecting on a player whose influence on modern batting still hangs over the game. For many in the current squad, Pietersen was not a team-mate but a gateway – the reason they picked up a bat in the first place. Now they will have him in their ear, not just on their YouTube highlights.
From exile to influence
Few English batters have ever hit a ball like Pietersen. Across a 10-year international career, he shredded attacks with a style that looked like it had been fast-forwarded from the future – switch-hits, audacious drives, ruthless tempo. The numbers back it up: only Root and Alastair Cook have scored more than Pietersen’s 13,779 international runs for England.
Yet for all the brilliance, Pietersen’s name still carries the echo of conflict. In 2012, England dropped him amid allegations he had sent derogatory text messages about then captain Andrew Strauss to the South Africa dressing room. He returned under Cook, but the 5-0 Ashes capitulation in Australia in 2013-14 proved the end. When Strauss later became England’s director of cricket, he underlined the rupture, declaring in 2015 that Pietersen would not be recalled because of a “trust issue”.
The door is open again now, and Root, who played 12 Tests and nine ODIs alongside Pietersen, knows exactly what England are getting.
“He’s not afraid to speak his mind. That’s him as a person,” Root said. “When you get someone involved you want them to be themselves and you want them to come into an environment for a reason.”
The risk, the noise, the history – all of it has been debated to death. Root is far more interested in the upside.
“With his experience and knowledge about the game, and all that he can offer, I think he’s going to be great,” he said. “You’re looking at so many hypothetical things that could go wrong, when there are so many amazing things he will bring to that environment. The world is a very different place to what it was in 2014, and the England team is in a very different place to that as well.”
A mentor from the past
Pietersen will link up with Brendon McCullum’s staff for the white-ball series against Sri Lanka next week, an intriguing partnership between two of the most aggressive batting minds of their generation.
For Root, the appointment is not just symbolic. It is personal.
He made his England debut as a 21-year-old in 2012, a quiet technician still feeling his way into international cricket. Pietersen, the senior star with the swagger and the scars, could have kept his distance. Root remembers the opposite.
“He was always someone who gave me a huge amount, to be honest,” Root said. “He didn’t need to offer as much as he did to me, but he would sit there and work tirelessly, making sure I felt comfortable with my own game. He listened to all my questions and helped as much as he could. As a senior player, he was outstanding.”
That version of Pietersen – the meticulous, generous mentor – rarely made headlines during the years of fallout. It might now define his second act with England.
Root’s England, Root’s problem
While Pietersen prepares to re-enter the England fold in limited-overs cricket, Root has more immediate business. He leads England into the third and final Test against Pakistan at Edgbaston on Wednesday, with the hosts chasing a 3-0 clean sweep in his first series since returning as captain.
As with the previous two Tests, Root declined to reveal his XI ahead of the toss. Barring late surprises, England are expected to be unchanged. Continuity suits a side that has dominated the series and is chasing a statement finish.
Off the field, though, another debate has crept in. Ticket prices for next summer’s home Ashes have sparked anger among supporters. At Edgbaston, seats in the famous Hollies Stand for the Ashes are priced at £165, up from £125 for the same stand during the 2023 series against Australia.
Root chose his words carefully.
“I don’t know what it takes to run a county or run a venue, I don’t know what goes into that,” he said. “From a playing point of view and as a captain, you want the grounds to be full, and you want them to be full of every demographic of person.
“You want the game to feel like it is for everyone, that they can come to support you and enjoy that. I don’t really know what more to say on it, to be honest. It would be great to see this place full and thriving, and for everyone to have the opportunity to come to watch Test cricket.”
The message was clear enough: whatever the balance sheet says, an empty seat helps no one.
A habit England must break
There is another pattern Root wants to break in Birmingham. Under his predecessor Ben Stokes, England developed a strange quirk: they started Test series with a roar and ended them with a whimper. They have lost the final Test in each of their past six multi-match series.
Only a win at Edgbaston changes that narrative. Root knows it, and he is not about to let the new era be framed as a repudiation of the last.
“We wouldn’t have been able to play these last two games without all of the work those two did,” he said of Stokes and former Test coach McCullum. “I think it’s undervalued the impact what those two guys had on English cricket.
“You look at where we were and how we played our cricket, you look at how we’ve been able to perform in the last two games, a lot of that is down to the hard work and the way they changed the mentality within English cricket and this team.
“I’m not going to sit here and have comparisons thrown against those two, I don’t think that’s fair whatsoever. They deserve a lot of credit for the last two performances.”
So Pietersen returns to an England set-up that bears little resemblance to the one that pushed him out. Root stands at the centre of it all: defending the past, leading the present, and now welcoming back a figure whose shadow has never quite left the stage.
The question is no longer whether English cricket can live with Kevin Pietersen. It is what this new generation can do with him in their corner.
