New England Test captain Andrew Strauss has pledged to restore team unity following Kevin Pietersen’s resignation and the sacking of coach Peter Moores.

“We’ve got to get back to playing cricket and winning matches,” Strauss said at a news conference at Lord’s. Strauss is seen as a safe choice amid speculation that the team was split between the captain and the coach. English media had reported that Pietersen’s resignation was a fall-out of lack support from team mates, especially Andrew Flintoff and Strauss himself.

“I don’t think the rifts are nearly as bad as people have made them out to be,” he said a day after the departures of Pietersen and Moores. “I’ve got some conversations with some players and I’ll happily do that over the next week and move forward. It was clear you need a captain and coach in a good working relationship, that is the crux.” Strauss will lead the team on the tour of the West Indies later this month. The ECB is yet to find Moores’s replacement.

Strauss admitted there were signs on their tour of India last month that Pietersen and Moores were not getting on. “KP is very strong-willed person and I think that was one of his great strengths as England captain,” Strauss said. “He had a vision of where he felt England needed to go and he backed himself to deliver that. He wasn’t worried about upsetting a few people on the way. So in a way, that is a very positive trait to have as a person, but in another way it is going to create confrontations at times and that is the way it has worked out.

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