Former England fast bowler Ajmal Shahzad has admitted he was surprised when England team-mate Jonathan Trott made an apparently forced apology for a fielding mistake.

Shahzad on Tuesday corroborated Kevin Pietersen's claims that young England players were singled out if they misfielded off senior team-mates.

Pietersen has written in his autobiography of a "bullying" culture in which younger players in particular were taken to task and forced to apologise to bowlers for any slip-ups.

Shahzad, who has not added to his 15 international caps across all formats for more than three years, recalls being made to feel as if it was a "bit of a disgrace" if he made a mistake.

It did not take the bowling all-rounder long to find out about the "tough environment" either - because on his debut, in a Twenty20 against Pakistan in Dubai, Trott said sorry to the entire team for a costly overthrow.

"I remember the next day we had a meeting in the hotel room, (and) Trotty came to the front and apologised for what he'd done," Shahzad told BBC Radio 5 Live.

"Again, the feeling was he was made to - he felt as if he was asked to do so.

"He stepped up and made an apology, and it was something I had never seen before.

"I felt, this being my first game, it was the way it was done; if you make a mistake you apologise for the mistake you've made.

"It was a little bit different."

Shahzad told BBC Radio 5 Live: "There were times when I misfielded balls, (one) in the World Cup I dived over a ball, (and) there were some senior players you just didn't want to look at.

"You knew they were disappointed and (thought it was) a bit of a disgrace ... what you'd done was really bad.

"If you did something wrong it wasn't looked kindly upon. It did feel quite bad.

"I remember misfielding (in Bangladesh) and didn't want to look up because you knew you were going to get these hard looks, stern looks - and it did feel a little uncomfortable."

The 29-year-old Nottinghamshire paceman recalls the recriminations, but not so much the encouragement when things did not go his way.

He added: "There weren't many times when someone would come up to you and say 'don't worry about it - that's sport, you have ups and downs'.

"It was a tough environment."