Posted by If you answered ‘yes’ to that question, you’re wrong. Kevin Pietersen was not out on 202 when England declared.
The consensus seems to be that Pietersen probably should have been given out when he tucked the ball down to Rahul Dravid, but we care more about what happened after that. He wasn’t given out and India had another 196 opportunities to dismiss him, but didn’t.
As many of you know, we never really accepted that Kevin Pietersen was in some dire run of form, but he still surprised us a bit with this innings. To go all Tour de France for the third time this week, he drifted along in the slipstream of Bell and Prior, conserving his energy in the mountainous morning and evening sessions. Then, when the England peloton approached the flat of an evening session featuring three fully-knackered frontline bowlers, he burst out and sprinted like Mark bloody Cavendish.
On Sky, they called Matt Prior the catalyst, which may well be true, but it’s worth keeping things in perspective. Kevin Pietersen scored three times as many runs as Prior.
As for England’s declaration, 474 really doesn’t seem like that many runs to us. We’d have been tempted to try and inflict some more wear and tear on the immense Praveen Kumar being as we’re at the start of an overly rapid four-Test series, but maybe we’re going too far with the long range planning with that. After all, the guy who wins the Tour de France will have done so by picking the right times to attack.
197 chances…..that must be some very poor fielding….
Maybe they stopped catching them once they realised KP won’t be given out anyway
No comments on Dhoni’s superlative bowling effort? That’s surprising.
Of course, Cavendish isn’t going to win the TdF, and I hope Pietersen doesn’t get docked 20 runs from each of the last two days for slow play.
It was always going to be given not out after it went to the 3rd umpire.
I was more disappointed with the Pietersen review. I don’t know why they hardly looked at the Hotspot from side-on.
Nevertheless pietersen played well!
Pietersen’s innings was truly a delight to behold.
I was there, folks, I was there!
Dravid and Sachin playing, are you there now?!
Who are they?
Daneel, just couple of old folks who you shouldn’t be paying much attention to.
No , he was not out . Did you see the splay of the fingers.the ball touched the grass. so NOT OUT. Aren’t you glad anyhow.You would have missed all that magnificent batting.And yes there were times when his team mates took over to allow him relax his concentration,[it was a long day ]but that is what TEAM MATES do. Bravo England and Bravo KP.
assad rauf should have the faith of conviction to have given kevin peterson out at 49, if assad regards himself as an international umpire. However he chickened out. Every body knows that unlike humanbeings ,who have 3 dimensional vision, the TV only has 2 dimension vision. Once it was refered, 99 percent of the time it is given in the batsmans favour. Had he been given out, which was the correct decision, then the whole atmosphere and direction would have been different.Let us hope the same mistake is not repeated in the forthcoming matches.