Kevin Pietersen and England: checkmate

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/may/12/kevin-pietersen-england-checkmate-the-spin

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In 2001, after nine years spent hiding from public view, the great Bobby Fischer began to play internet chess. At least we think he did. No one can be certain, because the player many reckoned to be Fischer was using a pseudonym. The British grandmaster Nigel Short said he was “99% sure” that he had played, and lost to, Fischer. “My unseen opponent began with some highly irregular, if not totally absurd, opening moves,” Short said. “From this deliberately unpromising position emerged moves of extraordinary power.” Fischer was a man blessed with such unique, imaginative and powerful talent that his opponents knew him by his style of play alone.

In the morning he is on edge, almost uneasy. Kumar Sangakkara edges a catch to second slip, soon after so does Steve Davies. Twenty minutes in, two batsmen gone, and Surrey four down now. Leicestershire haven’t won a championship match in the last two years. Easy pickings, some say. But under their new coach, Andrew MacDonald, and captain Mark Cosgrove, they have a hard edge. Their lines are tight, their chatter loud, their fielding sharp.

Related: Andrew Strauss confirms no immediate England recall for Kevin Pietersen

Ask me then, at the start of play, and I’ll give you the same answer I’ve been using for a year. “Should they pick KP?” No, not now. It was the wrong decision to sack him, when, if they’d really wanted, they could simply have dropped him from the side as they would have done any other player. But now he was too old, his form too poor, and had offended too many people, for it to be worth bringing him back.

For an hour, he relies on two of his least celebrated shots, the leave, in which he twists his torso till he’s front on to the bowler, and that distinctive block, in which he lurches towards the ball and pats it down, as though it were a rambunctious puppy leaping up at his legs. He flaps at a sharp short ball from the young all-rounder Ben Raine. The ball catches something, perhaps his arm, perhaps his bat. Leicestershire are sure they have got him. They don’t. Two balls later, he’s up on his toes, and is hit on his pads playing outside the line. Another appeal. Another not out. Soon after, his 50 is up.

It had been one year, nine months, and 11 days since Pietersen’s last first-class hundred. Since then, his only three-figure score in any format was the 170 he took off the students at The Parks at the start of this season. In the 29 innings he played last year there were only two fifties, one for Delhi Daredevils, another for Melbourne Stars. He said it was all down to a dodgy knee which needed regular cortisone injections. Once it was treated, his form started to come back. After Christmas, there were a couple more fifties, both in the Big Bash. Even so, playing T20 was no way to make a case for winning Test selection. Not if he was serious.

Half an hour before lunch, he begins to tick. He is calmer now. One drive whistles past cover, another disappears straight back past the bowler. There is that signature back-foot drive of his, both feet together, elbow high, body bending like a reed in the wind. The spinner is on before lunch. Step, step, swat. Four. His feet seem sure of themselves, his movements are fluid. Step, step, swat. Six. That’s 95. All of a sudden he gets nervous. A tough caught-and-bowled goes down. There is an appeal for a catch down the leg side, another for a catch down the off. He grins at the bowler. A late cut, and as he comes back for the third run he punches the air. There’s a leap, too. But he doesn’t bother taking his helmet off as he waves his bat to the crowd. You get the impression he still has business in the middle.

It was Colin Graves who changed the game. He blew a great breath of fresh air through English cricket when he said that the first thing Pietersen has to do “is play county cricket for somebody”, if “he does that and then comes out and scores a lot of runs they can’t ignore him I would have thought. But that is up to him.” It’s the oldest, fairest, law in cricket: make your case with runs and wickets. So Pietersen persuaded, Sunrisers Hyderabad to release him from the group stages of the IPL so he could play for Surrey. But he only made 19 and 53* against Glamorgan, 32 and 8* against Essex. Sunrisers said all along they would, most likely, want him back for the final stages of the IPL. This match against Leicestershire was his last, best chance to do what Graves had asked of him.

When Tom Curran gets out, caught off an ambitious cut, he is on 154. A cover drive, played as he walks towards the ball, takes him to 158. The same score he made here a decade ago, in the fifth Test Ashes Test of 2005. A fortnight or so ago, I interviewed Peter Siddle, who has played more Tests against Pietersen than any other bowler. Got him out more times than anyone else too. “People keep saying that I’d be happy to have him back,” Siddle says. “But at the end of the day he averages 50 in Test cricket, so I’m pretty happy if he stays out of the side.”

We can’t know for sure, but it seems likely that Pietersen knew what was coming on Monday evening, that the ECB was going to tell him there was no way back after all. His friend and cheerleader Piers Morgan revealed as much at the end of the day, when he tweeted that “Andrew Strauss and Tom Harrison asked to see KP tonight. I believe to tell him he wouldn’t play for England again”. Strauss says it is only in the short-term, that he hasn’t banned him from playing in the future. But it feels like this innings was both a last appeal, and, more than likely, a farewell to the first-class game. He always had a sense of occasion.

Through the afternoon he had bided his time. He trusted in both Gary Wilson and Gareth Batty, shared the strike, showed the bowlers an almost incongruous level of respect, and took few risks. When Curran was out he began to play as only he can, striding forward into straight drives that disappeared over long-off, dropping into squats to play reverse sweeps. He was back, now, in a realm all of his own, one unapproached by any other modern English batsman. Leicestershire’s captain, Mark Cosgrove, set eight men back on the boundary, five of them on the off side. It didn’t make a whit of difference.

First, 250. Then, 254, his highest first-class score, then, the 300, the first of his career; 70 in a 100-run partnership with Chris Tremlett, an undefeated 95 in another with Matthew Dunn. Bowling became an entirely futile pursuit, like trying to swim up Niagara Falls. The shots “highly irregular, if not totally absurd”, and yet had “extraordinary power”. It could only be Pietersen. They say the issue was never with his talent. They’ve likely forgotten how extraordinary, how immense, his talent is. It has, after all, been a long while since we’ve seen him play like this. And if it comes down to attitude, you could rightly ask whether it says more about theirs or his that he is not in the team.

Ask me the question now, at the close of play, and I’ll give you a different answer.

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