Watching replays of Kevin Pietersen's wanton dismissal on the opening day of the Ashes series, thoughts turned to some verdicts made of Kim Hughes in an excellent new biography of the former Australia captain by Christian Ryan appropriately entitled Golden Boy. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hughes - rather like Pietersen now - was a wunderkind of batsmanship who had the world at his feet.

"To understand Kim Hughes," Ryan writes, "the first thing you have to appreciate is that here was a batsman who had every shot in the book, which can sometimes be a problem, because when you have all the shots you want to play them. And that can get you into trouble."

Wayne Clark, a fellow Western Australian, put it like this: "If he'd just played cricket, just got on and played cricket, he would have gone down in the annals of ****ing cricket history."

But of course Hughes never did go down in the annals, at least not for lustrous batting. He is remembered now mainly for quitting the Australia captaincy in tears after being emotionally crushed by the West Indian juggernaut. Not very manly. Not very Australian. His countrymen were embarrassed. We were embarrassed for him.

The problem with Hughes was that he just kept on getting out to silly shots. He played some wonderful cricket strokes - some may recall his brilliancy during the Centenary Test at Lord's - but he also found some extraordinary ways to get out. Even when he was made captain he didn't change. He still played the same way and when challenged was unrepentant. I'm an entertainer, he said. This is the way I play.

Sound familiar? It's Pietersen all over. Pietersen has made more of his talent than Hughes - who finished with a Test batting average of 37.4 from 124 innings - but is nevertheless still not making the most of it. Pietersen, as Hughes once did, has got so many options he doesn't always know which one to take and sometimes ends up, in confusion, picking easily the worst ... like trying to sweep a ball landing two feet outside off stump and top-edging it to short leg.

Pietersen and Hughes want us all to recognise that not many are blessed with their talent. They want us to be in thrall to it, because they certainly are. But as time goes on, what others actually think is that not many are as cursed with such lousy judgement. And the final verdict is the one they least want: that these are men who once had the world at their feet but who never came close to subjugating it.

Less than full support

On a more cheerful note from the same book - at least more cheerful for Englishmen - is the shocking behaviour it catalogues of two legends of the Australian game, Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh. These two had a lot to do with why Hughes failed so spectacularly as a captain (mind you, he lasted longer as a leader than Pietersen). Their hostility has long been known but never so graphically told.

Though Western Australia team-mates of his, Marsh and Lillee mistrusted Hughes's approach to the game. They thought he lacked maturity and responsibility and they were not entirely wrong. But when Greg Chappell pulled out of the 1981 Ashes tour for personal reasons, Hughes was the man chosen to lead in his absence and the players had a duty to support him.

Not, it seems, Lillee and Marsh. Marsh thought he ought to have been made captain himself and begrudged Hughes getting the job ahead of him. Lillee also thought Marsh, not Hughes, should have been captain. Ryan has extracted some devastating testimony from members of that tour party that shows the extent to which Hughes was fighting not just one team but influential elements of a second.

Fast bowler Geoff Lawson believed Lillee and Marsh spent "nearly every waking hour" undermining Hughes, while tour manager Peter Philpott is quoted as saying: "It wasn't a pleasant relationship between Kim and the other two [Marsh and Lillee]. They thought he was a soft boy. They were two hard men and they didn't have much respect for him. They respected his batting but not his captaincy or him as a human being ... They didn't hide that. In fact they allowed themselves at times to do just the opposite. They weren't disappointed at Kim failing. I don't think they set out to destroy him. Basically, they just did."