Former India wicketkeeper Farokh Engineer, who lives in Manchester, expressed shock at Kevin Pietersen's retirement from all forms of international limited overs cricket
“This is shocking because he’s very much suited to one-day cricket. This decision is very strange to me,” said Engineer, who is on a visit to Mumbai.u00a0Engineer, who played for Lancashire on the English county scene in the 1960s and 1970s would not buy Pietersen’s reason for staying away from the one-day game.u00a0
Former India stumper Farokh Engineer
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“With the intensity of the international schedule and the increasing demands on my body, approaching 32, I think it is the right time to step aside and let the next generation of players come through to gain experience for the ICC World Cup in 2015,” said Pietersen in a statement to which Engineer reacted: “They have enough of rest. He’s a young man. We used to play county cricket seven days a week. This ‘load on the body’ stuff is a load of rubbish,” he said.
Pietersen will not be part of England’s Twenty20 squad for the World Cup in Sri Lanka this September due to an England and Wales Cricket Board policy that says if any player makes himself unavailable for either format of one-day cricket, he is ruled out of selection for both one-day internationals and T20 internationals.
Engineer found the ECB’s policy strange and added: “KP’s retirement is a huge loss to England where the World T20 is concerned. He is by far their best player and one of the best strokeplayers in the world today. I thought it was the other way round — that cricketers play only one-day cricket as they get old to earn more money.”u00a0
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