Geoff Miller and Hugh Morris are not renowned as reckless gamblers, rather one a slightly dour northerner who tells winsome jokes on the after-dinner circuit, the other a nuggety and down-to-earth Welshman. Yesterday, though, as they installed Kevin Pietersen into the highest cricketing office in the land, they were taking their biggest gamble ever.

Along with Andrew Flintoff, Pietersen is the England team's highest-profile player, their best player and their greatest match-winner. The essence of the gamble is whether the demands of the job - and not only one job but three - will reduce his productiveness, potency and sheer brilliance as a player. Pietersen at his best is uninhibited and instinctive. If the extra responsibility changes that and affects his game for the worse, this roll of the dice will be a costly one.

Nobody knows how this will play out, not Pietersen himself, not the selectors who picked him and not this correspondent. Given that, is it a risk worth taking? I would say no on the basis that the downside is greater than the potential upside. Nor is it clear why the selectors are desperate for one man to do all three jobs. Michael Vaughan, about as good a captain as it gets, became exhausted during the past year doing just one of them. In time, I would not be surprised to see not only separate captains but separate coaches, too, for forms of the game that demand entirely different qualities.

My own choice would have been Andrew Strauss to lead the Test team and Pietersen the one-day team. Strauss is much more than the “safe pair of hands” he is so often labelled. When he did captain the side two summers ago against Pakistan, he lifted his game to new heights and, at 31, he is at the right sort of age - mature, steady and experienced - to have flourished in the job. He lost out the last time England gambled - on Flintoff - and now his time has probably gone.

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Yesterday, Pietersen insisted that he would try to play in the same instinctive, intuitive manner that has so enthralled England supporters since he made his international debut four years ago. He was absolutely right to say that he doesn't intend to change his style of play - that would be madness - but there is a big difference between confident expressions at your first press conference and the reality of the pressures of the job. Just ask Ian Botham - or Flintoff, for that matter.

Pietersen knows that this issue is at the heart of whether his captaincy will be successful. Walking across Lord's with him at the end of his first press conference, he was honest enough to admit that he didn't know whether or how it would affect his game. He also said that if it did, he would be man enough to say that the whole experiment had been a failure and move on.

Yesterday, Miller, the national selector, expressed full confidence that Pietersen would take to the captaincy in the same successful way that he took to international cricket. Miller hopes that not only will Pietersen continue to inspire, but that the extra responsibility will lift his game to even greater heights. Such as those attained at Edgbaston on Saturday by Graeme Smith, who showed the difference between a brilliant cameo and a truly great innings. Pietersen had the chance to win that game for England before the desire to reach a personal landmark in a certain way overshadowed the match situation.

The appointment of an England captain cannot come without being agreed in the highest echelons of the ECB, so there is some sense of collective responsibility about this decision. Morris, the managing director of England cricket, said yesterday that he and the chairman of the ECB, Giles Clarke, effectively rubber-stamped a decision made by the selectors. But if it all goes

wrong, it is inconceivable that this decision will not come back to haunt Morris, the man ultimately responsible for England team matters.

Before appointing Pietersen, the selectors probably asked themselves two questions: could he have played the same way for his first 94 runs at Edgbaston if he had been captain? And, would he have played the same shot on 94 had he been captain? They probably reckoned the answer to the first question was “yes” and the answer to the second was “no”. Pietersen was unrepentant about the stroke. “I didn't see the 94 as a big issue,” he said. “The way that Colly [Paul Collingwood] and I were playing was exactly the way you have to play against South Africa and Australia. You have got to be positive and you've got to be aggressive and that's the way I'll continue to play and captain.”

Two other issues will determine how successful Pietersen's captaincy will be: his relationship with Peter Moores, the head coach, and whether England can recreate the same kind of potent bowling attack that was at the heart of the Ashes triumph in 2005.

Like Macavity, Moores has been hard to find in the past few days, absent as he was from both Vaughan's departure and Pietersen's coronation. But the best periods in the past few years have come when the captain-coach bond has been unbreakable. It is no secret that Pietersen has not seen eye to eye with Moores of late and so these differences will have to be settled quickly and irrevocably.

It is often forgotten that a captain is no magician. There are many things he can control, such as the style of cricket he wants his team to play, the personnel in that team and how they gel together. But without match-winning bowlers, no captain can flourish. Much will depend, between now and the Ashes in 11 months' time, on whether Stephen Harmison can rediscover his mojo, and whether Simon Jones and Flintoff stay fit. If they do, Pietersen's job will be made much easier.

As for the rest, there are no doubts. He treats his cricket with utter seriousness and has an intuitive feel for the game, as his batting often shows, and a good cricket brain. Forget the bling, the celebrity wife, the tattoos, the earrings and the ridiculous haircuts at the start of his career. They are all irrelevant because where it matters - on the training ground, in the nets and out in the middle - Pietersen sets as good an example as any England cricketer I have come across. Don't expect any Flintoff-like late-night tales from this captain.

Yesterday, he was also certain that the dressing-room would go with him. “I ummed and aahed last year when they asked me about the one-day job,” he said. “Now I'm a much more rounded figure and I've got a lot more support from the players. That's one of the most exciting things, the text messages and the phone calls from senior players who support me. Once you've got the support of the players, there's nothing more you can ask for.”

Good luck, then, to him as he embarks on the next stage of his remarkable journey. It is an enormous undertaking and he will need all his inner toughness to succeed. Yesterday, he said that Vaughan's were big shoes to fill, but unlike Tiger Woods, who was told the same thing about Jack Nicklaus, Pietersen did not say that he had big feet. I hope I'm wrong, but I have a horrible feeling that this is going to end in tears. But, then again, as Vaughan showed on Sunday, it always ends in tears.

Test record

M R Avge 100s 50s HS

42 3,777 50.36 13 11 226

One-day international record

M R Avge 100s 50s HS

76 2,687 47.14 6 18 116

World Test ranking (batsmen) 8th

World one-day ranking 13th

June 27, 1980 Born in Pietermaritzburg to an English mother and Afrikaner father

1998 Makes first-class debut for Natal B against Easterns as a No8 batsman and off spinner

2000 Plays for Cannock in the Birmingham League and makes 92 in a second XI game for Warwickshire, but is not offered a contract at Edgbaston

2001 Joins Nottinghamshire, hitting four centuries and averaging 57.95 in his first season

2003 Falls out with several players at Nottinghamshire and threatens to sue the county for unfair dismissal, even though he has not been sacked

Jan-Feb 2004 Even though he is yet to qualify for England, tours Malaysia and India with England A

Nov 2004 One-day international debut against Zimbabwe, making 27 not out in Harare

July 2005 Having moved to Hampshire, makes his Test debut against Australia at Lord's

Sept 2005 Makes 158 at the Brit Oval on the final day of the Ashes series

Nov 2006-Jan 2007 England's leading run-scorer in 5-0 Ashes defeat, scoring 490 at an average of 54.44

May 2007 Hits 226, his first Test double-century, against West Indies at Headingley Carnegie

June 2007 Captains England for first time, standing in for Paul Collingwood in one-day international against New Zealand

Words by John Westerby

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