This was not so much “the shot that was heard round the world”, as Bobby Thomson’s home run for the New York Giants was immortalised in the autumn of 1951, but a gauntlet thrown down that will be picked up on the other side of the world. Kevin Pietersen’s assertion that “if we play like that, we will beat Australia” will be noted, stored away and then rammed down his throat if the glory that he believes is preordained does not come to pass.

This was pure Pietersen. It was a harmless enough delivery and one that an “English” captain would have shouldered arms to and let pass by. The Aussies? We will just concentrate on the next match, thank you very much. Yawn, and dull copy all round.

Pietersen? He saw it as a scoring opportunity, and not for only a single, either. He ran down the pitch and thrashed it — one leg in the air, no doubt, flamingo-style — through mid-wicket for four. Thrilling stuff, especially for the marketers, who will not have to do much in the way of puffing hype before next year’s Ashes series.

One of Pietersen’s great triumphs this week was that he managed to get the assortment of drunks, cynics, skivers, scoundrels, gamblers and geeks collectively known as the press corps buzzing with excitement. Indeed, the uplifting nature of his pre-match message did not inspire only his team. We returned and opened our laptops with something close to enthusiasm.

So it was after the match. The Guardian could be heard telling its office that there were three back-page leads in the first five minutes of Pietersen’s victory press conference. The Independent had an unusual spring in its step, a mood that darkened when the office agreed that Pietersen’s quotes demanded more space and its workload doubled. It then yearned for a return to Atherton-like obfuscation.

England captains tend to come in two types where the press are concerned. Those who are fearful of them, or at least treat the demands as a tiresome interlude to the important stuff — as I did — and those who use a press conference for their own ends. Recently, Nasser Hussain was particularly adept at understanding the need to give a good line, but no one understood the PR value of a press conference more than Tony Greig. His assertion that India had the best umpires in the world before his team’s tour there in 1976 was a masterstroke of manipulation.

Pietersen will give better copy than any England captain since Greig, whose bullishness and sense of theatre he shares. Something to do with background, I suppose. A captain of a decidedly more English hue tried something similar after beating Australia 3-1 in 1985. David Gower thought that West Indies would be “quaking in their boots” before England’s winter tour to the Caribbean. But this was intended as a quip and nothing in the manner of Gower’s statement suggested that he believed anything other than the ensuing “blackwash” was a possibility.

The danger with opening your mouth too readily, especially if the brain has not been put into gear beforehand, is that you will say something silly that will come back to haunt. Greig’s faux pas came when he said that he intended to make West Indies “grovel”. Coming from a white South African, this carried unpleasant overtones and was used as a motivating tool by Clive Lloyd.

Rather bold foolishness than timidity, though. When England went to Australia in 2002-03, the message was that they were hoping to compete. This was greeted with scorn Down Under. At the end of the 2006-07 Ashes, after his team had been thrashed 5-0, Andrew Flintoff was asked whether the expectations on England before the series had been too high. Flintoff agreed. The message was hardly a confident one.

In Australia, when expectations and results diverge they do not dampen the former, they do something about the latter. Ricky Ponting and his Australia team went away after losing the Ashes in 2005 and worked their butts off to make sure that it would not happen again, but Glenn McGrath still predicted 5-0. He was right, too.

Where Pietersen scores over most of the recent holders of the England captaincy is that the Australians do not so much respect him as fear him. As one of a handful of players to have sent Shane Warne on to the defensive — as he did when Warne was forced to bowl Ashley Giles-like, two feet outside leg stump in Adelaide two winters ago — the Australians know that Pietersen will back up his words with appropriate action on the field.

It was Mike Denness who once received an envelope in Australia marked “Mike Denness, cricketer”. Inside, the letter simply stated: “Should this reach you, the post office clearly thinks more of your ability than I do.” There is no chance of that happening to Pietersen, one reason why his optimism where the Ashes are concerned will be respected Down Under. For his sake, and for ours in the press box, he should keep on singing.