Kevin Pietersen in his recent interview talked about how Rahul Dravid helped him out to play the spinners better.
It was during the 2010 series against Bangladesh where the England batter struggled against the likes of Shakib Al Hasan and a few more spinners in the team. Pietersen reached to Dravid who wrote back explaining the art of playing spin.
Pietersen and Dravid represented Royal Challengers Bangalore together in IPL for two years from 2009 and 2010. During that time both the legends bonded over the game.
“Dravid wrote me the most beautiful email, explaining the art of playing spin and ever since then it was a whole new world. The key point was looking for the length as soon as the ball was delivered – wait for the spinner and make your decision,” Pietersen said on Sky Sports.
This is not the first time Pietersen opened up about how Dravid has helped him. in his book ‘KP: The Autobiography’., he wrote about Dravid.
“One good practice is to bat against Swann and Monty without pads or with just knee pads (maybe not a day before a game!). When you have no pads it will force you, sometimes painfully, to get the bat forward off the pads and will force you to watch the ball,” read a part of Dravid’s mail to Pietersen.
“Also, the leg will be less keen to push out without any protection. My coach would tell me you should never need pads to play spin!! Watch the ball and trust yourself. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t play spin, I have seen you and you can!”
Another England player and Pietersen’s teammate Nick Knight weighed in on how the dynamics of batting changed after his retirement in 2003.
“I would always look to play with the spin, the coaching manual told me to play with the spin,” he said. “People like Kevin and Dravid looked to play against the spin and to me that was so foreign – I was fearful of getting out. That’s how the game has evolved. Brave players would see it differently.”
Knight represented England for 100 ODIs in a seven-year-long international career between 1996 and 2003.
