Pietersen did not flout training rules: English board

LONDON - The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has denied that Kevin Pietersen aggravated his achilles injury by flouting the training programme during the Indian Premier League in April.

Evan Speechly, the Bangalore IPL team’s assistant coach and physiotherapist, had Friday claimed that Pietersen, who has been ruled out of the rest of the ongoing Ashes Test series, had gone on a training run in Durban.

“I think he was just feeling so good about it (recovery) that he got a bit carried away and tried to run on it too soon. He woke up one morning and decided to go for a run along the beachfront in Durban. It flared up again after that,” Speechly had said.

But suggestions made by Speechly that Pietersen was under instructions not to run were refuted by the ECB. Neither the board nor Pietersen’s advisers denied that the player had gone on the run or even that his achilles may have been damaged during the exercise, but the ECB did deny that Pietersen had flouted instructions not to go running, The Guardian reports.

An ECB spokesman described the suggestions “blatantly untrue” that Pietersen had been ordered to refrain from running during his stint with the Bangalore team.

“Pietersen reported to Loughborough before he flew out to South Africa and was passed fit to join up with Bangalore,” the spokesman said. “ECB medical staff sent Bangalore a fitness programme and at no stage did Kevin Pietersen do anything to contradict that.”

“Kevin Pietersen is the most diligent and responsible of trainers and prides himself on his physical fitness and preparation for playing cricket. The ECB medical staff hold him as one of the best examples of a player who does everything within his power to achieve maximum fitness to play cricket.”

A spokesman for the player said Friday night: “Kevin had a medical before he went on the trip (to the IPL in South Africa). He would not have been allowed to get on the plane if there was anything wrong. He reported to Loughborough before he flew out to South Africa. They gave him a programme and told him to stick to it but he was never told not to go running.”

Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff, both centrally contracted, played in the IPL immediately before one of the busiest and most important international summers in memory.