Flower Hints at Long Absence for KP

England coach Andy Flower has strongly hinted that Kevin Pietersen will not be offered a new central contract, and that the batsman will more than likely miss the four test tour of India later this year.....

It comes hot on the heels of Pietersen being left out of the T20 world cup squad and also the ODI squad to face South Africa in the next few weeks.

Flower told the Guardian"The issue is not specifically between the captain and Pietersen. There are a number of unresolved issues and it would be inaccurate to judge it as just an issue between those two."

The England coach hinted that a period of time is now needed, as he went on "I understand some people would like this resolved overnight. I don't think it is something that can be resolved overnight if we want to go about it properly. An example of that would be finding out exactly what these text messages contained if we do really want to move forward either way."

"He sent an apology via his agent to the ECB. If you are going to move on from situations such as this you need to know exactly what situation you are moving on from, so I think we need to get to the bottom of some of this speculation and rumours before we move on. I think it's always nice to have a large element of upfront honesty."

Although Flower did hint at the point that he probably should have tried to intervene sooner in the row, which was allowed to escalate to ridiculous levels during the second test, which led to Pietersen being left out, he did say that he couldn't be held responsible for a player texting the opposition and control what was indeed in those text messages.

Explaining the severity of the situation, Flower concluded "There are certain behaviours that are unacceptable and I think we've seen some of that just recently. So to move forward we must get over those hurdles."