Losing Kevin Pietersen would be a blow to England but New Zealand cricket captain Brendon McCullum said on Thursday they could not afford to let his replacement Johnny Bairstow get confidence.
Pietersen has been ruled out of the deciding Test at Eden Park, starting on Friday, with a knee injury and faces a six to eight-week break which means he will miss his Indian Premier League campaign with the Delhi Daredevils.
The England and Wales Cricket Board said Pietersen, who complained of pain in his right knee since the Queenstown warm-up match for the three-Test series, might have “possible cartilage damage”.
McCullum said Pietersen’s loss would hurt England but they couldn’t let Bairstow get going like Nick Compton, who has scored two centuries this series despite limited Test experience.
“I think he’s one of those guys that can take the game away from you pretty quickly … They’ve still got some good options to come in … but they’re certainly not Kevin Pietersen,” McCullum said.
“But once they get out on the pitch, we’ve got to make sure that we execute in the areas that we need to, otherwise – as we’ve seen throughout this series with guys like Compton – they can hurt you if you don’t nail them.”
England captain Alastair Cook said losing Pietersen was tough but that Bairstow had been lucky and had been practising well.
“In an ideal situation, you’d like a little more match practice behind you, but you can’t choose sometimes. I know he’s very excited at being given the opportunity and he won’t be looking at that as a negative.”
McCullum said spinner Bruce Martin would definitely play despite Eden Park’s short straight boundaries, saying Martin had earned his place with good matches in Dunedin and Wellington and it was best for the balance of the side.
However, the team hadn’t decided by mid-Thursday whether Doug Bracewell would return from injury to replace one of the seam-bowling trio of Tim Southee, Trent Boult or Neil Wagner who played in the first two Tests.
“With the efforts they’ve put in throughout these last two test matches, it’ll be pretty hard to drop one of them.”
