Cape Town (South Africa), Dec.1 (ANI): England cricket team coach Andy Flower has said that it saddens him when he sees fans and spectators booing great players like Australia’s Ricky Ponting and England batsman Kevin Pietersen, but adds that sportsmen of their stature and achievement are used to it.

“He (KP) is used to it,” Flower said.

“There is the pantomime villain scenario. I don’t think it affects him, but it is disappointing. I did not like hearing boos when [Ricky] Ponting walked out to bat in the summer. I find it sad when people boo a great cricketer going out to bat for his country,” The Times quoted him, as saying.

While scores of 4, 45 and 1 in the one-day series suggest that KP is feeling his way back after four months out with an Achilles injury, Flower, the England team director, believes that his leading batsman is still rusty and that management must remain patient, however impatient the player becomes with himself.

“He is a high achiever and an outstanding sportsman, so impatience is understandable. He is frustrated because he chases success, but he is playing nicely and I am sure he will score heavy runs at some stage of the tour. I do not think he will be fretting. He is a confident man,” Flower said

Pietersen left South Africa to pursue his cricketing fortune in England because he believed that the policy of transformation, introduced to compensate for the distortion of opportunities for people of colour created by apartheid, restricted his opportunities to progress.

So far, he has suffered far more booing at grounds than the more reticent Jonathan Trott. (ANI)