Training regime is making him feel old, Pietersen admits

Hyderabad: Yesterday's warm-up game here is a long way from the glitz of the next World Cup in Australia, but it is where Kevin Pietersen must start the journey — providing he can be motivated enough to do the ‘young man's' training required of England's one-day side in their quest to win that tournament.

Pietersen will be 35 when that World Cup takes place in 2015, and while he says he does not want to find himself ruing unfulfilled ambitions once he has retired (England have never won a World Cup), he admitted on Friday that the hours on the training field were beginning to take their toll.

"It's not generally the playing," Pietersen said after practice in Hyderabad. "Turning up and playing for England is amazing — you never take that for granted. It's just some of the training days. They become monotonous, tiring — days you just don't want to get up for."

Pietersen has suffered a sore wrist for much of the past six months and was rested for the one-day series against India in England. It was, he says, his first real break since making his one-day debut in 2004 (other than with injury) though it does not appear to have fully restored him, or the wrist, which has twice been injected with cortisone.

Tiring work

"September off was brilliant, but I still trained," he said. "I like training but it's more a case of the travel, England kit, travel, routine. When you do it however many times in your career, it does become tiring. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with it, just that it's tiring. But in order to be the best team in the world you have to train like that."

With four years until the next World Cup, which he insists he wants to play in, his tone sounds more fatalistic than optimistic.

It was similarly careless talk that marked the beginning of the ends for both Andrew Flintoff and Steve Harmison, after they admitted becoming cheesed off with the increased amounts of training.

Flower and the coaches around him clearly have faith in the law of small improvements which hard work brings, though it can sometimes be difficult for the most gifted players to buy into it with the same enthusiasm.

At one level Pietersen obviously still does, something he proved on Friday by clocking the fastest sprint over 20 metres, a distance he covered in 2.77 seconds. Yet, England's push for 50-over dominance appears to have increased the intensity of their practice sessions even further, something he might question given his batting in the summer, at least in Tests, was as good as it has ever been.