Is he frail or foxing? Kevin Pietersen keeps Australia guessing about the state of his knee Kevin Pietersen during England training at the indoor nets at the SCG on Tuesday. HE gave little more than a smile and a shake of the head, the detached right of the superstar, it seems, and walked out of the SCG nets. No answers yesterday about the state of his knee. Instead, Kevin Pietersen is having too much fun playing the role, keeping Australia guessing. What must Australia be thinking? Pietersen has so little cricket in recent times the bat must feel like a club. He missed England's opening your match in Perth because he was at a friend's memorial in South Africa. Rain washed out two of the four days in Hobart, giving Pietersen only one bat, with eight runs in 10 balls. He left Hobart early to get cortisone in his knee on Sunday. His last game before that was two months ago when he injured his knee against New Zealand. He told the doctors he wanted nothing to do with surgery whilever there was an Ashes series coming up in Australia, and now that time has come. What state Pietersen is in now, and will remain, is still to be seen. His best chance for time in the middle was supposed to come today, the first day of a four-day game against an invitation XI, but with more rain forecast today it looked increasingly likely that whatever time there was available, it will be severely diminished. The invitational is England's final warm-up before the first Test in Perth in eight days. So as the rain fell yesterday Pietersen padded up shortly after 9am and headed into the nets for 45 minutes of throwdowns, with a couple of soft spinners lobbing them down towards the end. Pietersen needs consistent time in the middle. Not just to find form but to condition his body for the tour ahead, with the England star confirming on the ECB website that a breakdown is a genuine fear. On a three minute video Pietersen hits the gym and works up a sweat slightly more intense than yesterday's net session called for, trying to steel his body for the slog of an Ashes campaign. "I'm working on my legs hoping my legs hold up because I've had the knee issue so I've just got to make sure the rehab continues," he says.