Andrew Strauss admitted he could've made things work better with Kevin Pietersen. The former skipper regrets the fall out with Pietersen, whose troubles with his teammates and the management, then co-led by coach Andy Flower, were always in news during Strauss' last few months as captain of England. 

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"I probably didn’t do enough work with KP," Strauss told a Sky Sports podcast. "There came a time when some of the people he was close with in the team retired or got dropped. There was an opportunity there, not necessarily to bring him in, but spend a lot more time with him and make sure his views were valued and considered."

"I think instead I just let KP be KP. In retrospect that was a mistake and might have sowed the seeds for what was to come down the track." 

Pietersen was dropped from the England Test side in 2012 after allegedly sending insulting messages about Strauss to his visiting South African mates. That episode overshadowed Strauss' last Test at Lord's against the Proteas. 

Overcoming disciplinary issues, Pietersen was re-integrated into the side under Alastair Cook's leadership later that year in India where he played a key role in helping England pull off a rare Test series win in the subcontinent. 

However, the great batsman's international career came to an abrupt end at the culmination of the nation's 5-0 Ashes whitewash in Australia the following winter. The untenability of Pietersen's relationship with England came to the fore. 

Strauss also recalled issues over Pietersen opting out of international assignments in order to fulfil his IPL commitments. “I always had sympathy with KP over the IPL," he said. “I understood what a big event it was with all the best players playing there together and huge amounts of money on the table as well."

"Long term my view was that we had to find a window for the IPL. I told the ECB we couldn’t compete against each other as it is going to create massive issues within our team."

“But I thought it was incredibly dangerous to allow players to miss Test cricket to play in the IPL. The message you’d be sending and the precedent you’d be setting is that the IPL is more important than Test cricket."

“I was saying to KP at the time, ‘listen, mate, this is the situation. You can’t opt in or out of international cricket. You’ve got obligations to England and hopefully, there are gaps where you can play in the IPL as well’."

Later, when Strauss first became director of English cricket in 2015, he encouraged players to take part in the IPL, hoping that will help England change its limited-overs fortunes, which eventually worked as the national side won a 50-over World Cup for the very first time last year. 

“When I took over as director of cricket, I looked at the calendar and whether we could shift so that our players could play in the IPL," he said. 

(Inputs from IANS)