Kevin Pietersen has been named as the New Captain of the England team. The 28-year-old will be leading England in all forms of the game. The change of captaincy comes a day after Michael Vaughan and Paul Collingwood had announced their resignations as the Test and One Day Captain respectively. Pietersen has some experience leading his country when Collingwood had suffered a ban during the New Zealand One Day Series.
Pietersen’s Test Captaincy Debut will come during the fourth and final Test against South Africa at The Oval which begins from the 7th. The entire cricketing world will be watching whether the Captaincy role affects Pietersen’s batting or not. Although he entered the international arena very late, Kevin Pietersen has quickly gone upto a phenomenal level in the cricketing world because of his exhilarating batsmanship. KP can easily be called as one of the best batsmen in the world currently and bowlers do get intimidated by his sheer presence in the middle. And England will be hoping that his natural attacking game doesn’t disappear because of the Captaincy burden which happened in the case of greats like Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara.
England have also named their squads for the final Test and also the One Day Squad for the Series against South Africa. Michael Vaughan had opted out of the last test and his place has been taken by Ravi Bopara. The One Day Squad has an uncapped player in the 23-year-old Samit Patel, who is a hard-hitting right hander batting in the middle order. Samit Patel plays for Nottinghamshire and he also rolls his arms with some useful left arm spin. Samit was also a part of the England U-19 team a few years back. Another notable inclusion is that of wicket keeper Matt Prior, who replaces Tim Ambrose.
England Squad for 4th Test : Alastair Cook, Andrew Strauss, Ravi Bopara, Kevin Pietersen (Captain), Ian Bell, Paul Collingwood, Tim Ambrose (Wicket Keeper), Andrew Flintoff, Stuart Broad, James Anderson, Ryan Sidebottom, Steve Harmison, Monty Panesar
England Squad for One Day Series against SA : Alastair Cook, Luke Wright, Ravi Bopara, Kevin Pietersen (Captain), Owais Shah, Ian Bell, Samit Patel, Paul Collingwood, Matt Prior (Wicket Keeper), Andrew Flintoff, Graeme Swann, Stuart Broad, James Anderson, Ryan Sidebottom, Chris Tremlett