The notion that Kevin Pietersen can do no wrong is primarily based on the fact that under his captaincy the England one-day team beat a departure lounge-happy South Africa in a pretty convincing way. There are some slightly more searching tests coming up, however. First India in India and then Australia in England. Proper five-day Test-match cricket, too, the form of cricket that, like water, invariably finds the weak point of anything it touches.

I was surprised by Pietersen's glorious start, but a little thought convinced me that this was a reaction based on superficial judgments. I remembered him two years ago, on England's most recent tour to India - the way he talked, the way he batted.

After his glorious display of audacious power-hitting at the famous match in which England secured the Ashes, I had assumed that Pietersen would always play the same way and that he would be great fun until he got found out. But Pietersen was ahead of me and ahead of the bowlers.

He didn't have a great tour to India, but he went down thinking rather than swiping. He wasn't content to be a swashbuckler, although he had all the talents to play the role. On that tour he made it clear that he intended to be a batsman of substance. He was actively and consciously seeking greatness.

He was prepared to be patient, he was prepared to be canny, he was prepared to be anything you liked. He was prepared, above all, to be someone quite different from himself, if that was what success required. And it has worked. His drive for sustained, long-term success has proved stronger than his desire to cut a dash, to impress the ignorant, to win small battles.

When he was made captain, most people were concerned that Pietersen would never get his head around the crucial problem of captaincy; that is to say, other people. Other people never seemed to be what Pietersen would pick as his specialist subject on Mastermind.

But again, this thought does him an injustice. He may have struggled at times with the notion that cricket is a team rather than an individual sport, but as soon as he became captain it was clear that his desire for success was stronger than any of his other personality traits. He wanted to be a success as captain, therefore, he was prepared to become somebody quite different.

And so he has become everybody's best friend. He has established a college of senior players and instilled a culture of shared responsibility.

He has, above all, got Andrew Flintoff and Stephen Harmison playing close to their best, Harmison bowling like a proper bowler and Flintoff batting like a grown-up batsman.

Pointless to ask whether Pietersen has achieved these things in spite of or because of his narcissism. Pietersen is aware that what matters in sport is success and he is prepared to do anything it takes to be successful. And if that involves thinking about other people, well, he's even prepared to go to these extreme lengths. Suddenly it's possible to think of the next Ashes series without despair.

Trescothick's honest tale of depression is a triumph

I have eaten at the same table as Marcus Trescothick. I, thank God, had no more than the starter. Poor Trescothick went through the card, soup and fish and main course and pudding followed by cheese and biscuits, after which more arrived on room service.

I think most of us who travel for a living have known that sinking feeling of getting into a plane, on checking into a hotel, on coming back to the determined blankness of the room and facing the awful prospect of 14 hours to kill before you next have to be busy. It's called depression. That covers everything from mildly feeling out of sorts to the full Trescothick.

A sportsman has it much tougher than a sports writer. Every day can bring real, public quantifiable failure. In a team sport, you have no privacy and yet you are always, at the end of it, alone. And that is what wore down Trescothick: a tremendous England batsman reduced to a wreck of a man sobbing his heart out in a Dixons store at Heathrow because he was frightened of getting on a plane.

He always seemed the most straightforward soul: a big, uncomplicated man with a big bat and the strength to use it. But depression was waiting to claim him - and when it did, the amazing thing is that no one blamed him. No one told him to snap out of it. The near-universal response was “there but for the grace of God”.

Now Trescothick has told his tale with straightforward, uncomplicated frankness in Coming Back To Me, with Peter Hayter, that most sympathetic of ghosts. Hayter did a superb job on Phil Tufnell's autobiography; now he's done it again.

England inextricably linked to footballing hell

I wonder what a clinical psychologist would make of England football. Perhaps he would diagnose depression. Certainly, he would see an entity that is hagridden by failure, inhabiting a world bereft of joy, one in which there is no triumph, only relief when things don't end too badly.

England's painful victory over Andorra will only increase this feeling. They are a team alienated from the very thing that should unite them. In the England dressing-room, the definition of footballing hell is other players.

All they expect from playing for England is misery, and now they march towards Zagreb knowing that there is a nation waiting to condemn them should they fall to their third successive defeat by Croatia. Football matches are won by unity, by a group of individuals who share the belief that someone will always be there to take responsibility, save the day, make everything all right. The England team are based on the exact opposite belief. The fear of failure is failure's father, and Fabio Capello seems no closer to slaying it than anyone else.

Last time I saw England play with joy was June 15, 2002, in Niigata, where they beat Denmark 3-0 in the round of 16 at the World Cup, everything in the world was possible and the fans danced around the stadium to the strains of the “let's go ****in' mental” conga. Ah me.

The lid is finally off Khan story

There were plenty of British journalists at the Athens Olympic Games of 2004 who believed that the big story was Amir Khan, who won a silver medal in boxing. Me, I thought gold medal-winners such as Kelly Holmes, Matthew Pinsent, Guo Jingjing and Hossein Rezazadeh were more fun. I remember trying fruitlessly to get out of covering the boxing final: “But he'll only lose. I want to see the dressage.”

No doubt the sports editor at the time, David Chappell, made the correct newspaperly decision. Still, now Khan has inevitably been beaten as soon as he took on half-hard opposition, at least I can say I told you so.

Team game does not suit Americans

The Ryder Cup begins a week on Friday and England, now curiously known as Europe, are, as usual, favourites, having won five of the past six. This is odd, when the United States have most of the best players. But the Americans don't really care about the Ryder Cup; they know they are the best, so why bother to prove it? Another factor is that as soon as they get into a team, they dive into the same state of depression as England footballers.