Pietersen has finally run out of partners

BY the time the shadows were lengthening at the Vauxhall end, Kevin Pietersen had left the field after perhaps his last dazzling hurrah in england. It was now just the flask-carrying faithful of the county game who remained for this second division match between Surrey and Leicestershire. this was not Pietersen’s kind of crowd and not his kind of platform. earlier in the day, the ground had not exactly been full but swelled by those who came to see the end of his bravura, clean-hitting 355 not out — the highest score of his career. At 11.20am, as Andrew Strauss was exiling him from international cricket, Pietersen ran out of partners. he then spent some time with ice apparently strapped to his calf, taking a breather as his Surrey team-mates came out to bowl. he returned after lunch to field at mid-off, anonymous but for the gaudy orange heels of his shoes and that slightly mincing walk. But as the afternoon session played out, he was in the pavilion, massaging his body and no doubt his ego. Perhaps his thoughts turned to the contrast with that late summer day in 2005 when his 158 here drew a crowd so large those who were locked out watched through the gates. he defied Brett Lee’s potentially decapitating bouncers and england won the greatest Ashes series of all. having been born in Natal and having played representative cricket for his homeland until he was 20, he was never going to be confused for Chesterton’s quiet men of england. they would not have had the three lions tattooed on their arms — before playing a test. Or inspired a mocking twitter account. Or fallen out with virtually every dressing room he was ever part of. So the minor miracle of yesterday was that the bungling eCB managed to turn the preening KP (above) into a martyr. that was a point touched upon by Alec Stewart, the former england captain and Pietersen’s boss at Surrey, who revealed that his controversial batsman had twice spoken on the telephone to Colin Graves, the eCB’s chairman-elect, about the specifics of how he could return to the england fold, only for Strauss, england’s new director of cricket, to slam the door on him. As Stewart spoke, a handful of spectators chanted: ‘We want Straussy out.’ the day’s play over, Pietersen walked out of the ground, a rucksack over his back, refusing to speak to journalists as he went. Grim-faced, he drove himself away in a flash black tesla. the outcast is now due to fly out on Friday to play for Sunrisers hyderabad in the Indian Premier League, and has a contract to play in the Caribbean Premier League too. that life of an imported star surely suits him better than the somnolent air of county cricket. the fly-in, fly-out nature of the engagement is seemingly more in keeping with his psyche than the conformity of conventional cricket, where being a good tourist counts for something important. he may return to play two more matches for Surrey, home to Lancashire and away to Leicestershire, as his contract suggests. But, with his england career over, today’s last throes of this county game may mark his departure from serious cricket in his adopted country.