Kevin Pietersen has defended Joe Root and insisted England's problems are out of his control as scrutiny increases on the captain.

England lost the third Test in the West Indies by 10 wickets, and were beaten 1-0 in the series, as their shocking recent record was laid bare.

Root is under pressure to resign as England captain

Root's side have won one Test match in their last 17 attempts and the state of red ball cricket in the country is in dire circumstances.

England legends Steve Harmison and Michael Atherton called for Root to offer his resignation as captain.

Now Pietersen has weighed in on the debate and told talkSPORT: "Who else is going to captain them? You are only as good as your players. As a coach you are only good as your players and as a captain you are only as good as your players.

"My question is who is going to take over and who is going to do a better job with the players they've got?

"Forget Joe Root, it's about the players. Who is going to do a better job with the calibre of players playing Test cricket for England?"

He added: "Don't point fingers at Joe Root. Understand the set-up, the set-up stinks."

Pietersen gave his thoughts on Root and England

Pietersen, who played 104 Test matches for England and scored more than 8,000 runs, pointed at the county cricket set-up in England and the dominance of T20 cricket.

"It's been happening for years," he continued. "I talked about it in 2018 and I got cleaned out. Every time I talk about English cricket or County Cricket on social media I get cleaned out.

"I played may last game of County Cricket and I could see how poor the standard was. 

"I talked about it then and then when I played the Big Bash and said there was so much mediocrity, so much nonsense and so much poor cricket in English cricket that there would be a time when this happens.

"I saw it as I played in it and I also played in County Cricket in the early 2000s when every single county game was like a Test match.

"You had the best players in the world playing every week up and down the country.

England have won just one of their last 17 Test matches

"It's not the fault of County Cricket, it's the invention of the IPL and the T20 tournaments around the world.

Pietersen added: "The best players are earning millions playing the shortest format of the game."

Pietersen also had radical ideas on how to overhaul the county game, thoughts that would not be popular with fans up and down the country.

"I said it a while ago, you have to franchise County Cricket and bring the best players together playing against each other as much as possible.

"Get rid of the riff raff. There are too many counties. There are people smart enough to work out how you structure it, but you bring the best players to eight or nine teams.

"Then you pay some top overseas players the big bucks to come and play eight or nine first class games.

"Pay them £500,000, £750,000, £1million… I don't care. You will get money from broadcast rights."