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Skipper Pietersen says batsmen let England down

28/06/2008

Stand-in England skipper Kevin Pietersen berated another poor performance from his batsmen as they lost to New Zealand today.

Chasing a total of 267, only Owais Shah (67) showed any class and fight as the rest of the batsmen failed as England were all out for 215.

The defeat at Lords saw England lose the five-match one-day series 3-1 and Pietersen was adamant that the batsmen, including himself, had to take the blame for the defeat.

"We've got ourselves in a position to win matches with our bowlers but our batting has let us down," said Pietersen, who only scored six today.

"Consistency is the word we're after. You cannot play exceptional cricket and then not play well for two weeks.

"You can't afford to get 20s, 30s, 40s, they don't win series, hundreds do and that's where we let ourselves down."

Pietersen, who scored 110 not out in the first match of the series in Durham but only managed another 23 runs in the rest of the series, admitted "I haven't batted well in the last couple of weeks, we always strive to get better but it just didn't happen".

The England captain praised the efforts of his bowlers in recent matches, but today they bowled poorly towards the end of the innings and conceded a massive 96 runs in the last ten overs.

An honest England coach Peter Moores admitted "we haven't bowled very well at the end of the innings and batting-wise it wasn't good enough".