Joe Root Welcomes Pietersen Back as England Mentor Ahead of World Cup
Joe Root insists this England side bears little resemblance to the one that cast Kevin Pietersen adrift a decade ago – and he believes the returning superstar can be a powerful force in the dressing room rather than a disruptive one.
Pietersen, one of England’s most gifted and controversial batters, has been brought back into the fold as a mentor with the white-ball squad in the build-up to the 2027 World Cup in South Africa, the country of his birth. He will link up with Brendon McCullum’s staff for the white-ball series against Sri Lanka next week.
Root, now the elder statesman of the Test team, is the only current England red-ball player who shared a dressing room with Pietersen. He was on that ill-fated 2013-14 Ashes tour that effectively ended Pietersen’s international career and triggered one of the most acrimonious fallouts English cricket has seen.
This, Root says, is a different world.
“The world is a very different place to what it was in 2014, and the England team is in a very different place to that as well,” he told BBC Sport, making it clear that the scars of the past should not cloud the opportunity of the present.
From exile to influence
Pietersen’s story with England has never been simple. Brilliant, combustible, rarely dull.
He was dropped in 2012 amid allegations he sent derogatory text messages about then-captain Andrew Strauss to members of the South Africa team. He was later brought back under Alastair Cook, only for England to implode in that 5-0 Ashes hammering in Australia. When the dust settled, Pietersen was jettisoned again, and in 2015 Strauss, by then England’s director of cricket, publicly ruled out a recall because of a “trust issue”.
Now, after years on the outside, Pietersen returns not as a player but as a voice in the room – and not a quiet one. Root knows exactly what that means.
“That's him as a person,” Root said. “When you get someone involved you want them to be themselves and you want them to come into an environment for a reason.”
Pietersen’s reason is obvious. Only Root and Cook have scored more international runs for England than his 13,779. For a generation of current players, he was the poster on the bedroom wall, the batter who reverse-swept, slog-swept and switch-hit long before such shots became routine in white-ball cricket.
“A lot of the guys will have watched him and got into the game because of him,” Root said. “It will be great for those guys to have the opportunity to work alongside him.”
The numbers back up the aura. Across a decade of international cricket, Pietersen’s aggressive, inventive strokeplay felt like a sneak preview of where the sport was heading. Modern white-ball batting has caught up with him; England now want to tap into the mindset that got him there first.
Root, who played 12 Tests and nine ODIs with Pietersen, remembers a senior pro who invested heavily in a rookie’s development.
“He was always someone who gave me a huge amount, to be honest,” Root said. “He didn't need to offer as much as he did to me, but he would sit there and work tirelessly, making sure I felt comfortable with my own game. He listened to all my questions and helped as much as he could. As a senior player, he was outstanding.”
The old tensions will not vanish from the record books. But Root is adamant the upside outweighs the hypotheticals.
“You're looking at so many hypothetical things that could go wrong, when there are so many amazing things he will bring to that environment,” he said. With that, he drew a line under the past and looked ahead to a World Cup cycle where Pietersen’s experience is now an asset, not a threat.
Root’s England chase clean sweep – and full stands
While Pietersen steps into a mentoring role with the white-ball group, Root’s immediate focus lies at Edgbaston, where he will lead England in the third and final Test against Pakistan on Wednesday. A 3-0 clean sweep beckons in his first series since returning as captain.
As at Lord’s and in the opening Test, Root declined to name his XI in advance, though England are expected to be unchanged. The task is clear: finish the job. Under Ben Stokes, England developed a damaging habit of starting series fast and fading late. They have lost the final Test in each of their past six multi-match series.
Root knows only one result changes that narrative.
He also moved quickly to defend Stokes and McCullum’s legacy after England’s strong start under his renewed leadership.
“We wouldn't have been able to play these last two games without all of the work those two did,” he said. “I think it's undervalued the impact what those two guys had on English cricket.
“You look at where we were and how we played our cricket, you look at how we've been able to perform in the last two games, a lot of that is down to the hard work and the way they changed the mentality within English cricket and this team.
“I'm not going to sit here and have comparisons thrown against those two, I don't think that's fair whatsoever. They deserve a lot of credit for the last two performances.”
While Root guards the dressing-room culture, pressure is building outside the boundary. Ticket prices for next summer’s home Ashes have sparked a fierce debate, with Edgbaston’s famous Hollies Stand rising to £165 a seat, up from £125 for the 2023 series against Australia.
Root did not wade into the economics, but his concern was obvious.
“I don't know what it takes to run a county or run a venue, I don't know what goes into that,” he said. “From a playing point of view and as a captain, you want the grounds to be full, and you want them to be full of every demographic of person.
“You want the game to feel like it is for everyone, that they can come to support you and enjoy that. I don't really know what more to say on it, to be honest. It would be great to see this place full and thriving, and for everyone to have the opportunity to come to watch Test cricket.”
So England stand at an intriguing crossroads. A former enfant terrible returns as mentor. A former captain returns as leader. A fanbase is asked to dig deeper into its pockets.
If Root gets his clean sweep in Birmingham and Pietersen ignites a new generation of white-ball stars, the next chapter of English cricket may be written by some very familiar names.
