Sign up now ><\/a><\/p>\nEarlier this week, former England captain Cook urged Bethell to leave the IPL early and return home to play county cricket for Warwickshire ahead of the international home summer. England\u2019s first Test against New Zealand commences at Lord\u2019s on June 4, four days after the IPL final.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor that top order batting, the way he played at Sydney, against that attack, in those conditions \u2013 I\u2019ve looked at a player there and I\u2019m certain this bloke can open. If he can bat three, he can open,\u201d Cook told the Stick to Cricket podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201c(But) it\u2019s not ideal, is it? Bethell shouldn\u2019t really be it, because he\u2019s not opening. He\u2019s sitting on his a*** at the IPL not doing anything. Ideally he could come back and open for Warwickshire to help England.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Pietersen rekindled his old feud with Cook by urging Bethell to stay in the subcontinent, arguing the experience will be more beneficial than time in the County Championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlastair Cook has absolutely NO IDEA what it\u2019s like to be in the IPL, what\u2019s it\u2019s like to always be around the best players in the world,\u201d Pietersen tweeted on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo his opinion on Jacob Bethell doesn\u2019t matter at all. <\/p>\n
\u201cStay in India, Jacob. I know, even though you\u2019re not playing, you\u2019re learning and will be a way better player.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cIf county cricket was as strong as it was in the late 90s and early 2000s, I\u2019d also want Bethell back playing it now. But, it\u2019s NOT! <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll benefit England more by him being in India and he\u2019s already shown that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kevin Pietersen speaks with England captain Alastair Cook. Photo by Gareth Copley\/Getty ImagesSource: Getty Images<\/p>\n
Pietersen, one of England\u2019s IPL trailblazers, was dropped from England\u2019s Test side following the disastrous 2013\/14 Ashes tour, when Cook was national captain.<\/p>\n
Asked about his IPL involvement on the Sky Cricket podcast, Bethell argued that remaining in India was \u201cthe thing for me to be doing right now\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel better now than I was a month ago after the World Cup, just from getting time around the guys over here and the pure standard of cricket in India and the IPL,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery nets session, you\u2019ve got hundreds of eyes on you, be it your coaches or the other players who are also looking at you, going, \u2018Is this guy good? Is he not?\u2019 You\u2019ve got the people in the crowd with their phones on. You get exposed to a lot of stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cYou might not get the amount of time in the middle as in County Championship playing four rounds of that. But I think in terms of the ability to actually just continue doing what you want to do when there are loads of eyes on you, is really important for me personally going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, former England fast bowler Steve Harmison warned that Bethell was at risk of missing selection for the series opener against the Black Caps due to the lack of cricket under his belt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England legend Kevin Pietersen has reignited his long-running feud with former national teammate Sir Alastair Cook, declaring his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-626696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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