326 RUNS BUT ALL IN VAIN
KEVIN Pietersen’s sense of occasion can never have been more devastating, his bat never brandished with such relish. With Andrew Strauss set to be unveiled at Lord’s as England’s new director of cricket, the game’s most notorious exile scored 326 not out for Surrey against Leicestershire. Of those, a staggering 291 came in a day.
Depending on your perspective, the timing was either exquisite or excruciating.
One thing was undeniable: it was the mother of all retorts — even as it emerged that Strauss and ECB chief executive Tom Harrison told Pietersen at a private meeting last night that his England days really are over.
As Pietersen reached 200, a small section of The Oval echoed to the cry of ‘Are you watching, Andrew Strauss?’ Of all the questions asked of the ECB in recent times, it might just have been the most pertinent.
It is fair to say Pietersen and Strauss have history. Pietersen referred to Strauss in disparaging terms in a text message in 2012, while Strauss repaid the compliment live on air last summer. Neither slight was intended for public consumption, but the damage was done — and it has rumbled on ever since.
It is the future that matters, however. And Strauss will have to choose his words rather more carefully when he addresses the media to explain why he appears to have taken the decision to cut short Pietersen’s attempted comeback.
He already knew the KP question would take centre stage. But, as Pietersen moved towards the first triple century of his career, Strauss might have spent an increasingly fraught day rehearsing his lines in the mirror.
This innings could go down as a glorious irrelevance in the grand scheme of things as England seek to embark on their latest new era. But as irrelevancies go, it was mighty hard to ignore.
As a relaxed-looking Pietersen put it last night on the Oval outfield: ‘ They say that timing is everything.’ He could hardly have made life more awkward for his former captain.
Strauss, of course, is a man who knows his own mind, and the early signs are that he will have no trouble being ruthless.
News that he had sacked Peter Moores as coach was reported before he had even been confirmed in the director’ s job.
He also took a dim view when Pietersen was recalled to the England team for the 2012-13 tour of India following the text saga that had cost him his place against South Africa that summer.
Team spirit, Strauss suggested ominously back then, is a delicate thing at the best of times.
With English cricket doing everything it can to move on from its turbulent recent past — mainly unsuccessfully — Strauss seems to have remained unmoved by Pietersen’s dismantling of the Leicestershire bowling yesterday. And yet the
Maximum: KP launches another six unlikely set of circumstances that were required for KP to return to an England side he last represented at Sydney in January 2014 are closer to realisation than ever. Paul Downton, who sacked Pietersen and insisted he would never play for England again, is no longer managing director, while Moores — who fell out with Pietersen during his first stint as coach in 2007-09 — is now gone, too. The fate of national selector James Whitaker, another who has been implacably opposed to Pietersen’s return, hangs by a thread.
England’s Test team, meanwhile, took a step backwards when they lost to West Indies in Barbados and Pietersen himself is now indisputably in the runs, averaging 218 in the county championship.
Much more of this and the pleas for his return on social media could crash the internet.
It is true that Leicestershire have not won a first- class game since 2012 and dropped Pietersen five times — on 96, 110, 165, 223 and 311 — as the mayhem played itself out on a sun-kissed afternoon in south London.
But the next best score in Surrey’s total of 528 for nine was Kumar Sangakkara’ s 36. It wasn’t that Leicestershire bowled especially badly. It’s just that Pietersen was in the mood to make a point and there are few more dangerous beasts in world cricket.
Only when Ben Raine, a lively 23-year- old seamer, gave him a working-over in the 40s did he look genuinely discomforted. Otherwise it was a procession.
Pietersen reached his 50th firstclass hundred, but his first since the Ashes Test at Old Trafford in August 2013, from 153 balls, then moved through the gears.
His next four fifties came off 75, 48, 34 and 39 balls. In all, he hit 34 fours and 14 sixes in 373 deliveries. By the end, he was taking the mickey.
‘When you go past 100, 200 and approach 300, it’s a pretty good place to be,’ he said. ‘After 100, I always say batting becomes very easy, because you take that pressure away. The more you bat, the more you see the ball. For two hours there they had most of the fielders on the boundary.’
Pietersen’s attempts to persuade the new ECB regime that he could no longer be ignored would in any case have needed to take a back seat if he is required by Sunrisers Hyderabad, who are on course to qualify for the latter stages of the IPL.
But, as he dismantled a middling county attack on the eve of Strauss’s unveiling, it was tempting to ask whether the cricketing gods really ought to have finished quite yet with Kevin Pietersen.