Kevin Pietersen Returns to England Cricket as Mentor

Kevin Pietersen back in England colours. Not at the crease this time, but in the dressing room – and Joe Root insists this is a very different England to the one that cast him out a decade ago.

Root, now Test captain again and the only current player to have shared an England shirt with Pietersen, has welcomed the 46-year-old’s return as a mentor to the white-ball side in the build-up to the 2027 World Cup in South Africa.

“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,” Root said, drawing a sharp line between the past and the present.

From exile to influence

Pietersen’s England career ended in the wreckage of the 5-0 Ashes defeat in Australia in 2013-14, the same tour on which a young Root was still finding his feet. That whitewash prompted the brutal decision to move on from Pietersen, with then director of cricket Andrew Strauss later citing a “trust issue” as the reason he would not be recalled.

It capped a turbulent stretch. In 2012, Pietersen had been dropped amid allegations he sent derogatory text messages about captain Andrew Strauss to the South Africa team. He was later reintegrated under Alastair Cook, only for Cook’s side to disintegrate in that Ashes debacle, and Pietersen’s international career never recovered.

Now, the story turns. Pietersen will join Brendon McCullum’s staff for the upcoming white-ball series against Sri Lanka, with a longer-term eye on the 2027 World Cup. For Root, who played 12 Tests and nine ODIs alongside him, it is a move that makes cricketing sense.

“With his experience and knowledge about the game, and all that he can offer, I think he's going to be great,” Root said. “A lot of the guys will have watched him and got into the game because of him. It will be great for those guys to have the opportunity to work alongside him.”

Pietersen’s record still looms large. Only Root and Cook have scored more than his 13,779 international runs for England. His audacious strokeplay, his ability to rip apart attacks, and his white-ball instincts were years ahead of their time. The modern one-day and T20 landscape looks far more like Pietersen than the era that pushed him out.

He was, though, rarely a quiet presence. Root knows that side of him as well.

“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.”

A mentor from the past

For Root, this is not just about reputation or nostalgia. It is personal.

He remembers a senior player who invested in a 21-year-old making his way into international cricket in 2012.

“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 obsessive, driven, technically sharp mentor – is the one England’s white-ball setup hopes to tap into. The dressing room he walks into now is more empowered, more expressive, and far less fragile than the one he left. The scars of 2014 belong to a different era.

Root’s England chase clean sweep

While Pietersen prepares to slip back into the England fold with the white-ball squad, Root has more immediate business. He leads England into the third and final Test against Pakistan at Edgbaston on Wednesday, chasing a 3-0 clean sweep in his first series since returning as captain.

As at Lord’s and in the opening Test, Root declined to reveal his XI before the toss, though England are expected to remain unchanged after back-to-back wins.

The cricket has been convincing. The context around it, less so. Since the victory at Lord’s, debate has flared over ticket prices for next summer’s Ashes, with many fans angered by the cost of seats, particularly at Edgbaston.

Tickets in the famous Hollies Stand for the Ashes are priced at £165, up from £125 for the 2023 series against Australia. It is a jump that has jarred with supporters and raised familiar questions about access and affordability.

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. 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 is clear: whatever the balance sheet says, a Test match only truly breathes when every stand is packed.

No appetite for comparisons

Root’s return to the captaincy has inevitably prompted comparisons with the Ben Stokes–McCullum era, under which England often started series at a sprint but stumbled at the finish. England have lost the final Test in each of their last six multi-match series.

Only a win in Birmingham breaks that pattern. Root knows it, and he is in no mood to let the narrative slip into a referendum on his predecessor.

“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 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 England stand at an intriguing crossroads. A former lightning rod returns as a mentor. A former captain is back in charge. A team that once fractured under the weight of its own conflicts now talks openly about shared mentality, full grounds and a game that belongs to everyone.

The question now is not whether Pietersen has changed. It is whether this new England, on and off the field, is ready to make the most of him.