{"id":13534,"date":"2012-08-15T14:48:01","date_gmt":"2012-08-15T12:48:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/08\/cricket-pietersen-says-he-has-to-rein-himself-in\/"},"modified":"2012-08-15T14:48:01","modified_gmt":"2012-08-15T12:48:01","slug":"cricket-pietersen-says-he-has-to-rein-himself-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/cricket-pietersen-says-he-has-to-rein-himself-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Cricket-Pietersen says he has to &quot;rein himself in&quot;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">LONDON<\/span> Aug 15 (Reuters) &#8211; England batsman Kevin Pietersen<br \/>\nhas conceded he needs to control his behaviour following his<br \/>\ndemotion from the test team for sending South Africa players<br \/>\ntext messages criticising his team mates and staff.<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Pietersen was dropped ahead of the third and final test<br \/>\nbetween the two top-ranked test sides starting at Lord&#8217;s on<br \/>\nThursday. England, trailing 1-0, need to win to stay at number<br \/>\none.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I need to rein myself in sometimes. I did send what you<br \/>\nmight call provocative texts to my close friends in the SA<br \/>\nteam,&#8221; Pietersen said in an apology to the England and Wales<br \/>\nCricket Board (ECB) released on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The texts were meant as banter between close friends. I<br \/>\napologise to Straussy (captain Andrew Strauss) and the team for<br \/>\nthe inappropriate remarks at the press conference and for the<br \/>\ntexts.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I truly didn&#8217;t mean to cause upset or tension particularly<br \/>\nwith important games at stake.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>ECB managing director Hugh Morris responded to Pietersen&#8217;s<br \/>\napology in a statement on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are in receipt of Kevin&#8217;s apology, but further<br \/>\ndiscussions need to take place to establish whether it is<br \/>\npossible to regain the trust and mutual respect required to<br \/>\nensure all parties are able to focus on playing cricket.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Those discussions should take place behind closed doors,<br \/>\nrather than in the media spotlight.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Pietersen had intimated after the second test, in which he<br \/>\nscored a brilliant 149 to earn the man-of-the-match award, that<br \/>\nhe intended to retire altogether from international cricket.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>He then issued a statement via a staged YouTube interview<br \/>\nsaying he was still committed to playing for England. Pietersen<br \/>\nwas dropped on the following day.   <\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Tom Pilcher, Editing by John Mehaffey)<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright\">\n<p>         \t\t\u00a9 Thomson Reuters 2012 All rights reserved<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LONDON Aug 15 (Reuters) &#8211; England batsman Kevin Pietersen has conceded he needs to control his behaviour following his demotion from the test team for sending South Africa players text messages criticising his team mates and staff. Pietersen was dropped ahead of the third and final test between the two top-ranked test sides starting at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-13534","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}