No personal vendettas, Pietersen says

London: Following strict orders from England's management, Kevin Pietersen might not bring up spot-fixing during the series against Pakistan which begins today, but he and his teammates are set to carry on sledging the opposition if the need arises.

"There are no personal vendettas, but if somebody says something to one of us and I feel it's my turn to have a go and defend myself or whatever it is, I'm not going to change the way I play," Pietersen said on Sunday.

"We play our cricket very, very hard. There's no way Jimmy Anderson, who is a grumpy bowler, is not going to be grumpy. The guys will still be aggressive, that's what has got us to No 1."

The checkered history between the sides suggests it does not take much to spark the tinderbox, but Pietersen, a former England captain, is adamant he and his teammates will not be looking to exploit the recent events whereby three Pakistan Test players were given custodial sentences in British jails after bowling no-balls to order in the 2010 Lord's Test.

"The extra edge is a media issue, not a player issue, at least not with our group of players," he said. "We've spoken about it at length and that will not happen."

Pietersen remains England's most watchable player, in failure or success, his batting veering from the sublime to the ridiculous, often within the same over. The two warm-up games here netted him 54 runs in four innings, but while he has rekindled his zest for Test cricket, after falling out of love with it in the aftermath of his sacking as captain.

"It's become quite a joke among the lads as I've only scored two hundreds in however many warm-up games in my career, but it's not a problem at all," Pietersen said. "My preparation has always been 100 per cent for Test matches and I don't lose any sleep over not getting runs in warm-up games.

"I don't get any buzz out of playing warm-up games. I worked on a few things this game which actually worked out very well, but in a warm-up game I don't personally lose any sleep over not scoring runs."

"My motivation is still there to get 10,000 Test runs [he has 6,341], to get as many hundreds as possible [he has scored 19] and to average 50 in Test cricket."