Finn: Pietersen will bring an unfiltered challenge as England mentor ahead of World Cup

Kevin Pietersen has joined England's coaching ranks as a mentor in the build-up to the 50-over World Cup in South Africa next autumn, a move that Finn says surprised him as much as it did others.

Finn recalled Pietersen's last interaction with the England and Wales Cricket Board at Lord's, when he was told he would not play for England again in 2014, and noted Pietersen's subsequent success with his YouTube channel, The Switch, which made a coaching role seem unlikely. He said that stepping back to remember sharing a dressing room with Pietersen early in his England career changed his view, arguing that Pietersen's blunt and forthright manner can be useful because dressing rooms “can't be an echo chamber.”

On the white-ball tour of India last year, while Finn was working for the host broadcaster, he heard Pietersen criticise the lack of practice England's players had chosen in the build-up to games and observed that Pietersen's own training was always intense and purposeful. Finn described how Pietersen would approach him as he walked into the nets and say he was going to smash me everywhere and not get out, which would rile Finn to bowl quicker and raise the standard of the session.

Those competitive nets, Finn wrote, made him a better bowler, with frequent arguments about fielder angles and whether certain aerial shots could have been caught; those exchanges forced clearer thinking about technique and result. Finn said he enjoyed the battles in the nets because they added an edge to practice that helped steel players' minds and reactions for the highest level.

Finn outlined examples of Pietersen's innovation and skill, calling him ahead of his time with both mindset and technique: he credited Pietersen as the inventor of the switch hit and as an early, ardent supporter of the IPL. He also cited specific moments such as the flamingo flicks through mid-wicket in Test matches and hitting Glenn McGrath back over his head for six at Lord's in 2005 as illustrations of that forward-thinking approach.

Finn recalled a focused technical session in 2012 at the SSC in Colombo, where Pietersen had been facing local left-arm spin for an hour to correct a recurring issue overseen by Andy Flower, and then produced 151 against Rangana Herath in the second Test. Finn added that Pietersen backed that work up later in 2012 against India away, contributing runs, particularly in Mumbai, that Finn described as forming the bedrock of a historic red-ball series victory.

Reflecting on the 2013-14 Ashes in Perth, Finn said that with Mitchell Johnson and his moustache “running amok”, Pietersen approached him despite Finn not being in the starting XI and said 'let's go practice facing the short ball in the nets'. Pietersen threw bouncers at Finn's head and helped him develop a technique to play or evade short-pitched bowling, an intervention Finn acknowledged as beneficial even if Pietersen may also have been seeking to get out of the dressing room.

Finn noted Pietersen's readiness to voice dissent in debriefs and day-to-day discussions—citing an instance of dissent towards a fitness fielding session before the 2014 Sydney Test—and acknowledged that some might see introducing such a voice into an improving environment as risky. He argued that McCullum wants Pietersen to challenge standards and methods, and that Pietersen's era emphasised fundamental technique and hard work, a mindset Finn believes suits the 50-over format, which he said is now closer to the pace of modern Test cricket than T20 cricket.

Finn concluded that he believes Pietersen will bring that attitude to the dressing room over the next 14 months leading up to the World Cup, adding that there is no better time to introduce a voice of challenge and that Pietersen will provide this, unfiltered. Pietersen joins England's white-ball coaching team.