Kevin Pietersen was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, on June 27, 1980. He was a former cricketer who played both Tests and ODIs for England from 2005 to 2014. He made his debut for England in the 2005 Ashes series against Australia, where he played a pivotal role in England’s historic victory.
Kevin Pietersen was renowned for his explosive and outrageous batting style, and he was a key batsman for England in all formats of the game. During his international career, Pietersen broke several records and set several milestones. Among his many accomplishments was becoming the fastest player to reach 1,000 runs in one-day internationals for England. One of his most memorable innings was his astonishing batting display of 186 against India in Mumbai.
It would have been easy to omit Kevin Pietersen from any list on the grounds of unreasonable behavior, but it would also have been most unjust. He has played some of the most extraordinary innings you may have witnessed either as a player, commentator, or spectator, and it is those that you would rather remember than the unseemly way in which his England career was brought to an end. Kevin Pietersen ranks as one of the game’s greatest entertainers. You had to watch him step out to bat because he was capable of incredible things.
Kevin Pietersen’s incredible ability to produce smashes no one else could have imagined devised novel ways to attack bowlers who were simply too good for lesser mortals to play, including Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Muttiah Muralitharan, and Dale Steyn. In the end, he took more risks than the England management was prepared to tolerate in a team that was struggling (this was one of his ‘crimes’, though not the only one), but it was the risk-taking that made him such a spellbinding sight. It requires daring and bravery to play the way he did because there are commentators, colleagues, and team management all ready to question you if it all goes wrong.
To his immense credit, everything he tried in the middle had been thought through and practiced in the nets, exhaustively so. Maintaining one’s playing style requires bravery, and his level of achievement was achieved through diligent practice and meticulous examination. He had an unfortunate talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, but when he spoke about the science of batting, you were aware of how thoroughly he thought about what he was attempting to do. Let’s be clear: England would not have regained the Ashes in 2005 had it not been for him. Many members of the team contributed to the result, but Pietersen led the way by showing that Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath were not invincible.
At the time, the sight of someone in an England shirt hitting Glenn McGrath back over his head into the Lord’s pavilion for six or repeatedly slog-sweeping Shane Warne over midwicket for six was a revelation. Batsmen simply did not treat them with that sort of disdain. His tall height (6.4″) enabled him to demonstrate an exceptional ability to watch the ball and make contact with it effortlessly.
With the fate of the series and the Ashes in the balance on the final afternoon of the series at The Oval, his bravura innings of 158 sealed the day for his adopted country and cemented his status as a superstar and savior. To an extent, his later performances were attempts to repeat the heroism of that day. Unquestionably, he seemed determined to entertain first and think about the consequences later.
Nor would England have won the World Twenty20 in 2010—their first global trophy—without him. He was the tournament’s best player, and it was amazing to watch him destroy Morne Morkel and Dale Steyn in Bridgetown. Kevin Pietersen also scored runs in the final against archrivals Australia. Given that it was a Test match and he would have had to consider the dangers more thoroughly, not to mention that he was by then at war with some of his players, his attack on Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel in the Headingley Test two years later was even more remarkable.
Dale Steyn has probably never been treated quite so unceremoniously in a test. It is also highly likely that England would not have recovered from 1–0 down in India later that year had he not destroyed India’s spinners on a pitch in Mumbai that was tailor-made for them. He had imitated the spinners of Sri Lanka a few months prior in their Colombo backyard. He was a man for a challenge and a man for a big occasion, and these were some of the biggest asses any batsman could encounter.
The challenges that the finest bowlers presented inspired him rather than making him fear a bowler’s reputation. His development of the switch-hit was a move designed to counter a spinner such as Muralitharan. Others might have viewed it as a risk; he saw it as simply the logical answer to the problem. He also struggled against the seam bowling of Muhammad Asif numerous times, but it never hurt its credibility and reputation. He is the greatest batsman England has ever produced.
If you look at his stats in both formats, his overall stats—8,181 runs in 104 tests, at an average of 47.28—were not exceptional, merely very good, but if consistency was what you were after, he was not your man. He specialized in match-winning innings and provided plenty over the years. Even so, he perhaps ought to have done better. By the end of 2008, he had scored 4,039 runs and 15 hundred in 45 Tests at an average of 50.48, so to only add another eight centuries after that and an average of 44.53 during the remainder of his career represented underachievement. He was 28 years old by then and should have been entering his best years.
There was undoubtedly blame on both sides, but Pietersen’s history of falling out with different teams points to a common denominator. The ladders were still very high, but they became less frequent, and that must be blamed for the loss of the England captaincy and his frustration at not being able to spend more time in the Indian Premier League.
Kevin Pietersen seemed to suffer from a chronic incapacity to comprehend the workings of a sports team. Although there are conflicting stories that have emerged from the England dressing room at this crucial time in his career, for all those who saw him as an inspiration, you have to wonder how two decent men, Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook, both judged ‘KP’ to be dispensable.
You can sympathize in that a ‘My Way’ approach to life can set you apart from your colleagues, but, although they are in essence very different characters, one can see parallels with Geoffrey Boycott, whom I observed at close quarters at the start of my career. Geoffrey Boycott was not a natural integrator and followed his own rules doggedly when it came to the art of making runs.
Kevin Pietersen is a very different player; entertainment is more in his bag than Geoffrey’s clinical accumulation, but it is a crying shame that his ostensible inability to fit in cost him and the rest of us so much. Kevin Pietersen (KP), you will be missed for sure.
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