Thaindian News

Sydney, Dec 31 (IANS) England batsman Kevin Pietersen Friday said his team would not have retained the Ashes had he not been in the forefront of a campaign to remove former coach Peter Moores.The star player also said that his stepping down from England captaincy that time also helped the team.

Pietersen said there was no way England would have been successful under the same regime where he was the captain and Moores the coach. Pietersen had then accused Moores of hampering the progress of the team. Subsequently, Moores was sacked by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in January 2009.

“We would not be here today if I had not done what I did then. There was no way in this world we would have continued under that regime and won the Ashes again in Australia,” Pietersen was quoted as saying by The Daily Telegraph Friday.

The ECB reacted strongly to Pietersen’s claim that Moores’ coaching policy was stagnating English cricket and sacked both men and Andrew Strauss was made captain.

Pietersen recollected the time when Stauss phoned him on the captaincy issue: “When he called me and said: “The ECB want me to captain. Are you OK with that?”, I said, ‘Go for it, Straussy, you are a top man. I am a good mate of yours, so do whatever you need to.’ And I have been proved right. It was a good decision by the ECB.”

Pietersen further opined that he was confident of the success down under.

“We felt that before we started the Tests,” said Pietersen. “The last time we came here we got hammered. As we got off the plane, people in hotels, taxi drivers - everybody just abused us. This time, before the first Test, we were talking about it among ourselves. We were saying, ‘No one is abusing us here. This can’t be a bad thing.’”