In the wake of his decision to finally put his bat to bed, The Cricketer's writers provide their reflections on the career of the man we all came to call KP...
Kevin Pietersen has announced his retirement from cricket
Kevin Pietersen enthralled, thrilled, angered and frustrated England cricket fans for the best part of 15 years, from his international debut in 2004 to his retirement this year.
In the wake of his decision to finally put his bat to bed, The Cricketer's writers provide their reflections on the career of the man we all came to call KP...
Kevin Pietersen has been the oxymoron of English cricket. Entertainer on the field, maverick off it.
I would have liked to have seen him play on in Test cricket after the disastrous 2013/14 Ashes. Yes, he made some terrible blunders, but cricket needs its great cavaliers as it seeks to stay relevant. And what fun it would have been if he had played for South Africa, against England...
Bums on seats, and all that.
Picking one innings? Obviously you can never forget his 158 at The Oval in 2005, but I will plump for his 149 at Headingley in 2012, as that serves as a microcosm for his career as a whole: the sublime and the ridiculous.
His innings was wondrous, breathtaking, majestic. The alpha male, the lion, taming the tourists’ quality attack.
But then that Test will also be recalled for 'Textgate' (did he or did he not send messages to South African players critical of his captain, Andrew Strauss?); and his belittling of James Taylor, who had given him such valiant support.
And then there was the release of that video, revoking his decision to quit ODIs. It came on a Saturday night, as the nation was captivated by Mo Farah winning gold at the London Olympics. It was ill-conceived, crass and chronically ill-judged.
Genius, yet crass… there you have KP in a nutshell (if you will excuse the pun).
Pietersen and former England coach Duncan Fletcher
I will always marvel at the 186 at Mumbai, December 2012. Before the tour of India, Alastair Cook and Andy Flower had met Kevin Pietersen in Oxford to broker a peace deal to get him on the plane to India.
KP had fallen out badly with several of his team-mates the previous summer, when England were trying to beat a tough South Africa side in the dying days of Andrew Strauss’ captaincy.
The meeting worked. England lost the first Test at Ahmedabad. But then, at Mumbai, Cook and Pietersen each scored centuries, in an innings of 413 where spin accounted for all but 15 of the overs sent down. It was about as extreme as it gets.
What followed was the greatest exhibition of English batsmanship against spin of my lifetime – and memories of that second evening and third morning in the field must have played a part in India's call to finally end their opposition to the DRS.
India batted first on a turning surface, and it was pretty much expected that England would wilt away in the heat. But Pietersen went on to play Ashwin, Ojha and Harbhajan with such audacity and range of strokes that it was like a blow to the solar plexus. The reverse-sweep off Harbhajan that took him to a hundred was just his 127th ball. That sounds slow by today's standards; in India, in those conditions, that's like warp-speed.
It was only ever likely to be a temporary rapprochement. As Graham Gooch relayed to The Cricketer, it all ended rather nastily in Australia. I am quite glad I did not have to mediate between KP and England. But, to watch him from afar, when he had bat in hand…
KP celebrates England's 2005 Ashes win with a policeman
To watch Kevin Pietersen at the peak of his powers was to witness a master at work.
I was 18 when Pietersen and his peroxide white streak startled Australia at Lord’s and The Oval, slog-sweeping Shane Warne into the Mound Stand and depositing Brett Lee towards the famous gasworks.
My own summer in '05 was littered with ugly dismissals and it didn’t take long for me to realise that stepping in front of middle and off and whipping the ball through midwicket was only accomplishable by genius.
Because that’s what Kevin Pietersen the player was. He was a genius with the bat, he was incomparable among his peers in the England team and he was certainly inimitable - especially for a Wiltshire teenager with way too much bottom hand.
The sorry affair which led to the untimely end to his international career reflected well on no one; England lost their best batsman of a generation, Pietersen lost his opportunity to go from ‘one of the greatest’ to ‘the greatest of all time’ and the fans lost the maverick showman who combined obstinacy, persistence, arrogance and an extraordinary god-given talent to wow them over and over again.
KP: ENGLAND STATSTests: 104 matches, 181 innings, 8,181 runs, ave 47.28, 35 50s, 23 100sODIs: 136 matches, 125 innings, 4,440 runs, ave 40.73, 25 50s, 9 100sT20Is: 37 matches, 36 innnings, 1,176 runs, s/r 141.51, ave 37.93
He finished with 8,181 Test runs. There should have been many, many more.
He finished with 23 Test hundreds, which looking back now feels far too few.
Latterly, KP swapped ever-changing hairstyles for ever-changing franchises, maximising the jetsetting potential of T20 and happily lending his opinion to broadcasters in search of a handy soundbite.
On first glance it was a low-key way to end a career that was exactly the opposite, but he has used his status to encourage more participation in cricket among schoolchildren and, most recently, embarked upon his new raison d’etre - wildlife conservation in Africa.
He does so with absolute conviction and an all-consuming sense of purpose; just as he did when racial quotas forced him to leave South Africa; just as he did when he returned with England to the snakepit atmosphere of the Bullring; just as he did by perfecting the art of the counter-attack on that sunny September afternoon in 2005; just as he did for a masterful 149 at Headingley, a brazen double century in Adelaide and a remarkable 355 not out for Surrey the same week he let it slip he wanted to be selected by his country again.
It is easy not to like Pietersen.
It is impossible not to admire him.
Pietersen on his way to making a century against South Africa at Headingley
Whether or not you would want to invite him round to sip Darjeeling out of your finest china, in pure cricketing terms, a man with a bat in his hand, Pietersen was technically sublime and the sport was enriched by his presence.
In time those ugly whispers of text messages, loyalty and allegiances will, perhaps, fade into the shadows, while the the shining light of Pietersen’s talent, the incandescence of his masterpieces will stand the test of time.
For me, the memories are of Kevin Pietersen the early years.
His unbeaten 91 against Australia at Bristol was electric - Michael Vaughan called it “almost genius-like”. It gave England an edge and was a sign of what was to come.
Then to Lord’s. Pietersen would have been under pressure - if he feels such things - replacing Graham Thorpe in the bigger picture, and putting two chances down in the field in Australia’s first innings. But with the willow in hand, it was clear he was at home in international cricket.
England’s top order were dissected by Glenn McGrath. “He’s so good, Glenn McGrath is so, so good,” beamed Mark Nicholas. It was all so familiar.
This was Australia, the great Australia, this was Hayden, Langer, Ponting, Lee, McGrath, Warne… Nobody had told Kevin.
There are lasting images of KP swatting McGrath back down the ground, obliterating the Dukes back over the Aussie’s bleached-blonde barnet, and heaving Warne over midwicket.
The audacity to take on Warne, the cojones of the man to come down the track to the great McGrath. Pietersen’s courage showed England what was possible, his dismantling of Australia’s leading men humanised them. They were mortals after all.
There are too many examples of his talent to list; 158 at The Oval, Mumbai magic and an Adelaide double to name but a few… The rest is in the history books.
Not everyone can go out in a blaze of glory - his final innings (seven for Quetta Gladiators) will not be remembered - but sometimes it is the arrival that sticks with you.
Pietersen arrived on the scene a cocksure mop of spiked hair, sloshed in blue dye, and, without his presence, who knows what shape England cricket would have taken in the years that followed.
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