Pietersen questions the standard of County cricket after Stokes’s breath-taking hundred

Yesterday, Ben Stokes smashed his way through to a magnificent 88-ball-161 for Durham in their ongoing County encounter against Worcestershire. Interestingly, this knock by the newly recruited English skipper involved 17 sixes, which signifies its brutality to a great extent.

Following Stokes’s onslaught, Kevin Pietersen criticised the quality of the English domestic competition. The former England captain tweeted that although Ben Stokes is an amazing batsman in every respect, this sort of hammering certainly indicates the poor quality of the Worcestershire bowling lineup. 

Quoting a video posted by Durham cricket’s Twitter handle, Pietersen urged the audience to look at the bowling quality and decide whether County cricket needs to be franchised or not. 

Pietersen tweeted, “We all know the absolute quality of Ben Stokes. But, have a look at this bowling and please tell me that County cricket doesn’t need to be franchised?!?!"

For information, Pietersen has been very vocal on franchising the county cricket and even suggested an eight-team round robin league for the tournament earlier. According to him, if a huge amount of money is invested in County cricket, it will lure some of the best overseas players towards the championship. 

This will further allow the budding English cricketers to learn from those overseas players, thereby improving the standards of English cricket. As the ex-England batsman stated, this move will also attract the masses to the stadium because the encounters would be fascinating as the best teams would fight for the trophy.    

"They now need to introduce a similar franchise competition for red-ball cricket, whereby the best play against the best every single week. They would make money available to attract some of the best overseas players in the world and the top English players would benefit from playing alongside them.

It would be a marketable, exciting competition, which would drive improvement in the standard and get people back through the gates for long-form cricket. I see it as an eight-team round-robin league in the middle of the summer,” the 41-year-old had opined in January this year. 

Barring the debutant Ben Gibbon, all the Worcestershire bowlers went for more than four runs per over, which suggests their mediocrity with the ball. As it stands, Worcestershire are reeling at 199 for 6 at stumps on the second day, in reply to Durham’s first innings score of 580.