Hurt Pietersen stays back home to ‘heel’ his wound

Hyderabad: A day after announcing that discarded England ace Kevin Pietersen would join the Sunrisers Hyderabad squad for their business end of the IPL on Friday, SRH made a turnaround saying the star batsman had to stay back in England to nurse a heel injury.

“Unfortunately for both parties — KP and Sunrisers, he wont be featuring this year,” SRH head coach Tom Moody said on Thursday, eve of their match against Royal Challengers Bangalore.
“He was supposed to arrive tomorrow evening. Unfortunately he pulled up a little sore after his triple hundred (326 not out for Surrey against Leicestershire), but he wasn’t really concerned about it,” Moody informed.

“He had a precautionary scan done which he didn’t have any great concern about but as it turned out there was a little bit of concern as the report came back that he has got inflamed Achilles tendon which is an injury that he had a couple of years ago which has flared up,” the SRH coach explained.

Pietersen was bought by SunRisers Hyderabad in this year’s auction but was allowed to return home to England to play county cricket at his request. However, being told the doors of the national cricket team were shut, despite his recent triple century in a county game, the flamboyant batsman has decided to come down to India for the IPL, a tournament in which he has played 32 games so far, scoring 928 runs at an impressive strike rate of 136.07.