Every ball is an event, everyone is a captain: Pietersen

The presence of many former and current national team captains in the Rising Pune Supergiants squad is something that has been mentioned often by commentators and experts.

On Saturday (April 16), ahead of Rising Pune Supergiants`s third Indian Premier League match against Kings XI Punjab, the theory was put forward yet again to Kevin Pietersen. "Some good ones, some bad ones. I am the bad one," Pietersen quickly interjected.

"It`s fun because you are able to draw on resources that you sometimes would never have had and you can draw on experience. We all just get on and just play. MS [Dhoni] is the skipper, he makes the decisions. All we can do is hand down information that he can use if he wants to use and we back whatever decision he makes," the former England batsman said.

Considering the nature of the format, Pietersen believes that all eleven members are skippers in one way or the other.

"It doesn`t really mean that each one of us are captains on the day," he said. "I actually think that the 11 that take the field have to captain themselves. They have got a responsibility to MS and to the coaches to captain themselves and the team. So there might be four `C`s next to certain names in the team but I actually think that in T20 cricket, where every ball is an event, everyone is a captain."

When asked about the Kings XI Punjab outfit, Pietersen decided to focus on his own team rather than the opposition. "We are just going to worry about what we do. It doesn`t matter what the opposition does. T20 cricket is about momentum and when it is with you, it`s good; when it is against you, not so good. How that works, I don`t know. They have got a very good team on paper, we have also got a very good team on paper," he said.

When pointed out that Pune`s team looked stronger than Punjab`s on paper, the 35-year-old reminded the journalist about the presence of power hitters in the opposition`s camp.

"I wouldn`t say that at all, mate," he said. "They have got brilliant players in their team - from the Marshes to the Maxwells to the Millers. They have got very very good players, so on any given day anybody can take you apart in a T20 fixture, so we are going to make sure that we are on our game more than we were on our game yesterday or the day before."

"Do you want an answer I can bluff you with or do you want the real answer?" he quipped when asked if his team had analysed the mode of dismissals of the Kings XI batsmen after their twin failures. "The real answer, No! I haven`t got a clue."

The mercurial batsman also didn`t seem to be surprised by the spinners` success in the tournament. "We are in India and they have been doing it for a many 400 million years, so there is no surprise," he quipped.

After losing comprehensively to Gujarat Lions in their previous games, Pietersen believed that there are always areas to work on but also credited the opposition`s quality.

"We could have got a few more runs the other night; maybe we could have bowled a little bit better, but we come against opposition which has got wonderful players at the top of their order and were going target the first six overs of the game. You just come unstuck. Sometimes, it just doesn`t happen, everybody is doing what they can and you are going to lose games," he remarked.

"It is (about) how you respond to losing games, it`s not about losing games. You are going to lose, you are going to have bad days and you deal with your bad days and you accept them. But it`s how you deal with them and how you come back tomorrow. It`s a long tournament," he summed up.