Kevin Pietersen Returns as England Mentor Ahead of 2027 World Cup
Kevin Pietersen back in England colours. Not at the crease this time, but in the dressing room – and Joe Root insists it is a very different dressing room to the one that cast him out a decade ago.
The former superstar batter, once the lightning rod for division in English cricket, has been brought into the white-ball set-up as a mentor in the build-up to the 2027 World Cup in South Africa. Root, now Test captain and the only remaining player who shared a dressing room with Pietersen in that turbulent era, welcomes the move.
“I’m fortunate enough to be in that position where I did play alongside him,” Root told BBC Sport, reflecting on a relationship that stretches back to his own early days in international cricket. For many of the current squad, Pietersen is not a former team-mate but the player they grew up watching. “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.”
For England, it is a bold reunion with one of their most gifted – and most controversial – performers. Pietersen’s 13,779 international runs place him behind only Root and Alastair Cook in the country’s all-time charts, and his audacious strokeplay, particularly in white-ball cricket, foreshadowed the fearless hitting that defines the modern game.
He was, in many ways, playing 2024 cricket in 2009.
But the genius came with a cost. Pietersen’s England career unravelled amid acrimony: dropped in 2012 over allegations he sent derogatory text messages about then captain Andrew Strauss to the South Africa team, reintegrated under Cook, then cut loose after the 5-0 Ashes humiliation in 2013-14. In 2015, Strauss, by then director of cricket, shut the door with the now-famous “trust issue” line.
That history still hangs in the air whenever Pietersen’s name returns to official England business. Root, though, sees a different landscape.
“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,” he said. The implication is clear: this is not the fragile, fractured environment that once imploded in Australia.
Root knows Pietersen as more than a headline. He played 12 Tests and nine ODIs alongside him and remembers a senior player who, for all the noise, invested heavily in a raw 21-year-old from Yorkshire.
“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 willingness to speak, to challenge, to push, is part of what made Pietersen combustible in his playing days. Root does not expect that to change.
“That's him as a person,” he said. “When you get someone involved you want them to be themselves and you want them to come into an environment for a reason. With his experience and knowledge about the game, and all that he can offer, I think he's going to be great.”
There will be sceptics. Old wounds do not heal easily in English cricket. Root is aware of the “hypothetical things that could go wrong”, as he put it, but chooses to focus on the upside: the expertise, the aura, the sheer weight of big-match experience Pietersen brings as he joins Brendon McCullum’s staff for the white-ball series against Sri Lanka next week.
It also reunites two figures whose careers helped reshape the way batting is played. McCullum and Pietersen, in different shirts, were among the early disruptors of orthodox thinking in limited-overs cricket. Now they stand on the same side, charged with preparing England for another global tilt.
While Pietersen steps back into the England fold, Root has more immediate business. He leads the Test side into the third and final match against Pakistan at Edgbaston on Wednesday, with the chance of a 3-0 clean sweep in his first series since returning as captain.
As has become his habit, Root declined to reveal his XI before the toss. The expectation is that England will remain unchanged after dominant wins in the first two Tests, but the captain kept his cards close.
Off the field, another issue has been simmering since that second Test victory at Lord’s: ticket prices for next summer’s home Ashes. At Edgbaston, seats in the famous Hollies Stand have leapt from £125 for the 2023 Australia series to £165 for the coming Ashes, sparking debate over affordability and access.
Root did not wade into the economics. “I don't know what it takes to run a county or run a venue, I don't know what goes into that,” he admitted. His concern lies elsewhere. “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. I don't really know what more to say on it, to be honest. It would be great to see this place full and thriving, and for everyone to have the opportunity to come to watch Test cricket.”
On the field, England carry another unwanted statistic into Birmingham. Under Ben Stokes, they developed a habit of starting series with a roar and finishing with a whimper, losing the final Test in each of their last six multi-match campaigns. Root knows only a win changes that narrative.
He also bristled at any attempt to frame his early success in this second spell as a repudiation of what came before. Stokes and McCullum, he insisted, laid the foundations for England’s current performances.
“We wouldn't have been able to play these last two games without all of the work those two did,” Root said. “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 move forward with a familiar face back in the fold, one of their most mercurial talents now charged with guiding a new generation. Pietersen, once the symbol of division, walks into a dressing room Root insists has grown up and moved on.
The runs he scored are part of history. The influence he exerts now, from the other side of the boundary rope, will help shape what comes next.
