Thaindian News

London, Aug 15 (IANS) England’s maverick batsman Kevin Pietersen hopes that the World No.1 Test team can drill fear into the opposition, something that was mastered by the West Indies and Australia.

“When the great Australian and West Indian teams played for years and years, they killed the opposition. I played against that Australian team in 2006 in Australia; I promise you, every day’s play of those Test matches you weren’t looking forward to it because you knew you were going to get dealt with. That’s what I hope we can do to the opposition, but it’s going to be tough,” Pietersen was quoted as saying by The Daily Telegraph.

“That is a target, a huge target because I played against Australia when we did get hammered and it’s a horrible place to be,” he said. “So if we can inflict a similar defeat on India, it would be amazing for us,” he said.

Pietersen, a former England captain, now wants his team mates to inflict a 4-0 whitewash on India. He is also one of only three members, besides Andrew Strauss and Ian Bell, of the 2005 Ashes winning team that enjoyed success briefly before failing again.

But he feels that players have matured a lot.

“We’ve got a real good structure in place and great people; the management and a lot of mature players. You look at the number of games people have played, the hundreds we’ve scored, the wickets the boys have started to take - we look like one of the senior teams in world cricket, where two, three, four years ago we had a lot of inexperience,” he said.

Pietersen, however, knows that No.1 position is a dangerous place to be.

“I don’t think we want to make too much of being No.1 in the world because in England it’s a dangerous place to be,” Pietersen said. “I know, first hand, that as soon as you reach somewhere, people like to clean you out. But if we concentrate like we have this week, then why won’t we improve and continue getting these results?”