Published 14:17 IST, September 20th 2019
Kevin Pietersen left awestruck after Rahul Dravid's letter of advice
Kevin Pietersen had sought Rahul Dravid's advice on tackling spin. Dravid had sent a big note to KP which Pietersen revealed in his autobiography.
Kevin Pietersen never hesitates in entertaining his fans on social media with different types of unique and innovative strategies. Pietersen had earlier photoshopped himself in two images which were related to Bollywood movie songs. He had left his fans in splits when he had morphed an image of himself shaking a leg with Madhuri Dixit and Aishwariya Rai Bachchan in 'Dhola Re' from the movie Devdas and then the same morphed image were used in another song named 'Disco Deewane' from the movie Student Of The Year. KP was then seen playing blindfolded cricket where he kept on hitting the ball out of the park. Lately, a viral picture of Rahul Dravid's email to Kevin Pietersen has been going viral.
Rahul Dravid's advice to Kevin Pietersen
Rahul Dravid and Kevin Pietersen got to know each other well after the duo played for the IPL franchise Royal Challengers Bangalore. KP was one of the best batsmen during his playing days. However, even the best have failed at some point in time and the same happened with Kevin Pietersen as well. During England's tour of Bangladesh in 2010, the 'Three Lions' had played a practice match prior to the Test series where Pietersen had a forgettable outing as he could only manage to score 2 and 20 in both the innings and he had lost his wickets to spinners on both occasions. They were Shakib Al Hasan and Abdur Razzak respectively. Kevin Pietersen definitely wanted to improve and therefore, he decided to seek advice from arguably the best in the business, Rahul Dravid about how to play spin. Rahul Dravid, who is also one of the gentlemen of world cricket obliged and wrote a big note to the former English skipper on how to tackle spinners effectively. The World T20 winner went on to highlight this in his autobiography titled ‘KP: The Autobiography’. A fan has posted a screenshot of Rahul Dravid's letter of advice to KP which went viral on social media. Take a look.
Rahul Dravid's words of wisdom for KP
Here's what Dravid had asked Pietersen to follow in order to play the spin well.
“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. 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."
Updated 15:52 IST, September 20th 2019