At dinner with friends during the Lord's Test I was mocked gently for
bestowing greatness on Kevin Pietersen after his first-day hundred. They
were right, of course: greatness comes with the perspective of time. Bernard
Levin called the process the “sieve of history”; only when the sieve has
stopped shaking and all the dross has been removed can what is left behind
justly be called great.
Fair enough. Suffice to say that, for me, Pietersen is the most fascinating of
the present crop of international batsmen. Given a choice, he is the one I
would choose to watch and, given that he is a length or two ahead of the
field in the narcissism stakes, I suspect that he would say the same. Here
are a few reasons why he is such a special player.
Balance
“Footwork and balance and their co-ordination will always remain the
cornerstones of batting” - Don Bradman, The Art of Cricket
It is no coincidence that many of the great batsmen (Bradman, Sachin
Tendulkar, Sunil Gavaskar, Brian Lara) have been relatively short men. A
short, compact physique, with a low centre of gravity, helps balance.
Pietersen is 6ft 4in, but in his stance, with his knees bent and his bottom
sticking out as if he is flashing a moonie at the back of the school bus, he
makes himself into a much smaller man without - because his backlift and
hands are so high - losing the advantage of height.
Most tall batsmen struggle with their head position. That is why Tony Greig,
for example, stood with his bat off the ground. Alastair Cook spoke
yesterday of a technical glitch that is infecting his game, where his head
falls over to the off side, unbalancing him at the crease. Pietersen's
balance is superb. You do not think so? The next time you are facing a
spinner, try going down the pitch along the line of off stump and, while the
ball is in the air, change direction so you hit the ball on the line of leg
stump.
Facing Shane Warne's drift in the 2006-07 Ashes series, that is what Pietersen
was doing all the time. Always on the balls of his feet, he is amazingly
nimble for a big man. Like a ballet dancer.
Athleticism
“The greatest of players can improve by means of concentration and practice,
but the natural athlete must start with a great advantage” - Bradman
If you were born in Pietermaritzburg in the first half of the 20th century,
you had drawn a bad ticket in the lottery of life. Especially if you were
Boer (the British built a concentration camp there to house Boer women and
children during the Second World War) or, later, if you were not white
(Gandhi was thrown off a train in Pietermaritzburg for refusing to sit in a
third-class seat while holding a first-class ticket).
If you were a young (white) sportsman, though, Pietermaritzburg at the end of
the 20th century was a winning ticket. Pietersen led an outdoor life from an
early age, swimming competitively with his brothers in the family's large
swimming pool and enjoying sport all year round. “I went to school to play
sport,” he says in his autobiography. Blessed with this start, Pietersen
added a strict training regime when he became a professional cricketer,
taking creatine, the muscle-building supplement, for a year or two, to
increase his power.
Now, Pietersen is a magnificent physical specimen. Sam Bradley, the England
strength and physical conditioning coach, has said that Pietersen is a role
model to the rest of the team in this regard. Bradley said that recent tests
show Pietersen to be heavier but leaner (ie, stronger with less fat) than a
year ago. Compare that with members of the South Africa team, who look out
of condition.
For all Pietersen's occasional negative publicity, when was the last time he
was involved in a drunken escapade? He drinks, but in moderation and at the
right time. When you travel with the team, you see all kinds of shenanigans,
but I have never seen Pietersen behave irresponsibly. Discipline and
athleticism combined.
Intelligence
“My movements at the crease depended to some extent on the type of bowler who
was operating” - Bradman
Intelligence and Pietersen are not obvious bedfellows, especially to snobs who
think of intelligence only in terms of schooling. Pietersen may not have a
university degree (in his autobiography he admits to three A levels) and he
may not be able to translate Homer, but he is England's most cricket-savvy
batsman.
Instinct - the ability simply to react rather than think - is critical, but
just as important is the thought given to his approach to each bowler. Some
of it is premeditated: watch, for example, how far across his stumps he goes
to Makhaya Ntini to open up the leg side against a bowler who bowls from
near the return crease.
Equally, Pietersen is adept at changing his approach according to
circumstance. This is his how he described his thinking behind the
switch-hit for six off Muttiah Muralitharan at Edgbaston two years ago: “To
understand that shot you need to know that I had just come down the wicket
to Murali three times; I had hit him over mid-off for four, through mid-off
for four and then I had cut the doosra for four. Murali moved his mid-off
and mid-on back and put men at deep square leg and cow corner. All my
options had been blocked.” Cue the switch-hit, which he had practised
assiduously for just that situation.
Yogi Berra, the baseball legend, is reputed to have said: “Think? How can you
hit and think at the same time?” Pietersen does.
Big-match temperament
“A tremendous premium must be placed on this peculiar characteristic, which is
probably more essential for a batsman in cricket than any other sport” -
Bradman
When is an international batsman most nervous? At the start, of course.
Pietersen's impact at the beginning of his international career was
immediate. The beginning was in Zimbabwe, but because we are talking about
big-match temperament, let us fast-forward to South Africa in 2005.
Pietersen had many things to cope with, not least the start of his
international one-day career proper and sustained abuse from those who
thought that an Afrikaans-speaking boy from Pietermaritzburg ought to be
playing for the home team. Pietersen scored three hundreds and averaged 151.
His Test debut was against Australia at Lord's in the summer of 2005.
Pietersen went to the crease with England 18 for three and Glenn McGrath
dominant. He scored 57, was the ninth man out and by the end of the innings
McGrath was bowling to him with six men on the boundary. Since then the two
biggest games that Pietersen has played have been at the Brit Oval against
Australia, with the Ashes at stake, and his first Test against the country
of his birth. He scored big hundreds in both matches. English cricket has
been littered with talented players who have frozen on the big stage.
Pietersen is not one.
Desire must be at the heart of it. He has not forgotten his tough cricketing
apprenticeship, moving from home, living in a one-bedroom studio in Cannock,
Staffordshire, and playing as an overseas player there. That the club owed
him some money at the end of his stay is a running sore through his
autobiography. It is a cliché to say that a tough upbringing produces better
sportsmen, but I do not think Pietersen has forgotten his time at Cannock.
Attacking flair
“It is a batsman's duty to take the initiative and play shots” - Bradman
Know your limitations is a fair motto for less talented, but the best players
attack. Only once, in the early stages of the series against New Zealand
last winter, did Pietersen seem to want to blunt his flair and attacking
instincts. For a while he looked, in practice and in the match, as though he
was trying to become more regimented, hitting the ball straight in the “V”
between mid-off and mid-on.
Pietersen is at his best when he uses his wrists to hit the ball where bowlers
do not expect him to. It is time to worry when he stops playing the
“flamingo” shot (the one-legged whip through mid-wicket). At their best, Ian
Bell and Michael Vaughan are more pleasing on the eye, but Pietersen extends
the boundaries of the possible. There is not a more dangerous player in the
England team.
Greatness comes with the judgment of time. How much time do you need?
