Roy of the Rovers to England just as
Peter Hayter says the England selectors now have a fresh dilemma after Jason Roy’s electric run of one-day form
The parallels are obvious and England’s selectors might feel they are just too strong to resist. Back in 2005, a dashing 25-year-old South African-born batsman who appeared to be playing by his own rules smashed his way into England’s Test side on the strength of his blistering form in white-ball cricket.
For all the controversy, all the angst and all the fallouts, Kevin Pietersen’s Test career was a stellar one, producing 8,181 runs, 23 centuries, a double-handful of match-winning knocks and a host of memories to last an eternity.
Over the past week, with hundreds at Edgbaston and The Oval to clinch victory in the Royal London One-Day series against Sri Lanka, another 25-year-old South African-born has treated capacity crowds to the same brand of audacious strokeplay, self-belief bordering on arrogance, breathtaking skill and sheer pizzazz, which characterised Pietersen’s play at its best. Now, with places up for grabs as they prepare to select England’s Test squad for the upcoming series against Pakistan, national selector James Whitaker and his committee must decide if the time is right to give Jason Roy the chance to see if history can repeat itself.
When faced with a similar choice 11 years ago, some within the hierarchy thought picking Pietersen to face the ruthless and brilliant Australians would be a mistake, bordering on recklessness.
It seems extraordinary now, but the selectors only made their final decision over whether to pick him for the first Ashes Test of the summer at Lord’s five days before it took place.
Granted, he had scored 454 runs in six innings at an average of 151.33 at the start of that year, including hundreds in Bloemfontein, East London and Centurion, in the process turning on its head local and very vocal opinion about the player the vast majority of home supporters believed had betrayed his South African roots.
The doubters were concerned over whether KP could successfully bring his freestyle methods and all-action approach into the Test arena – this was, after all, the Ashes, no place, according to them, for flashy showmanship. And they persisted long enough to ensure that when England played two Tests against Bangladesh in the early part of the summer, Pietersen was excluded in favour of Ian Bell at No.4 and the veteran Graham Thorpe, who played his 99th and 100th Tests against the Tigers.
In the eyes of the non-believers, even a match-winning unbeaten 91 in England’s first meeting of the summer with Australia, the NatWest Triangular Series ODI in Bristol, which earned him the man-of-the-match award, was not enough to seal the deal.
Surely, in Test conditions, they argued, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne would have him for breakfast, lunch dinner, coffee and cigars. Indeed, according to the-then chairman of selectors David Graveney, while “it was no secret that our early season meetings were dominated by the name Kevin Pietersen after his dazzling batting against South Africa, I have to reveal that it was not until his final one-day England knock of the summer, against the Aussies at the Oval (when he made 74 in the third match of their bilateral series, on July 12, less than a week before the Ashes opener) that we were convinced he was ready for Test cricket”.