Kevin Pietersen has claimed that England captain Joe Root is "suffering at the hands of a system that’s so bad" as his side crumbled to a series defeat against the West Indies in Grenada.
England lost the final Test of the series by ten wickets and have now managed just one win in their last 17 Tests under Root. However, Pietersen has claimed that there is "NO ONE who can coach or captain that team any better".
In a post on Twitter, Pietersen wrote: "Poor old Joe Root suffering at the hands of a system that’s so bad! There is NO ONE who can coach or captain that team any better. ZERO batting technique! ZERO! I feel for the players!"
With England slumping to 120 all out in their second innings, batting coach Marcus Trescothick attempted to pick out some positives from the tour. "We've had one bad day today and over the course of the series this is the first bad day we've had," he said.
"Day one in Antigua we had a challenging day but fought back really well, Barbados we were really strong and controlled most of the game and today it's gone wrong. It's one bad day among 13 other days."
And Root also stressed England had made "big improvements" during the series, despite failing to emerge victorious. "I think we've played some really good cricket, he told BT Sport. "We've shown what we're capable of as a group.
"We've grown over the first two games as a batting group. We've taken big strides in that department and then yesterday really let us down, it really hurt us. It was an important day in the series and we just didn't stand up to it well enough. Unfortunately, it finds us in this position where we've ended up losing a series in which we've played so much brilliant cricket.
"We've got to show more of what we showed on the first day of this tour, when we find ourselves in those situations, that we can stand up and get ourselves to a competitive total. We've shown that we can do it, we need to do it more frequently. That's the frustration.
"I would say that the first day of the first Test match were among the more tricky conditions that we've had. I thought the attitude throughout the whole (tour) has been brilliant.
"In that respect, we've definitely made big improvements. There are so many good things that we can taken away but we've come here to win and we've not."
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