KP does not need county for country

Kevin Pietersen
12 April 2012

Kevin Pietersen's international career will not be under threat should he fail to secure a county contract for next season after revealing on Thursday that he will leave Hampshire at the end of the current campaign.

The 29-year-old said the decision was made because he wants to play closer to his London home, allowing him to spend more time with his young family.

An England and Wales Cricket Board spokesman said: "There is no regulation that says a player must be registered with a county to play for England."

He added: "Obviously the management would look on it favourably as it would give the player and the management the option for a player to go back to his county between internationals.

"But Kevin has not left Hampshire yet and there will be interest in him. We will wait and see what happens."

But of the sides within the London area, Middlesex and Surrey, currently lie outside the top flight of the County Championship, with Kent being the closest to the capital of all the First Division teams.

The South African-born star's outing against Surrey in the Friends Provident t20 on Sunday was his first appearance for two years.

Since signing from Nottinghamshire in 2004 England batsman Pietersen has made just seven County Championship appearances for Hampshire.

That lack of availability stems from Pietersen being an integral part of the England set-up across all formats of the game.

Indeed Hampshire chairman Rod Bransgrove said in Thursday's statement announcing Pietersen's impending departure: "Given England's critical dependence on KP in all forms of cricket, we have not seen anything like as much of him as we would have liked over the past six years."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT