Pietersen rises to fulfil Warne’s prophecy
AT THE start of the summer, you may recall, Kevin Pietersen could not get in the England team against Bangladesh. Shane Warne kept selling his Hampshire mate to the selectors, believing that “K P has to play, he’s one player who can hurt us”. Throughout Monday, Black Monday for the Australians, the pain must have been excruciating.
For Warne, it was self-infl icted pain because it was he who dropped Pietersen most straightforwardly on 15. This was a moment of such cruelty and of such hideous irony that even Warne, the great mover-on in life, will fi nd it hard to forget. He deserved better but the game does not care much for sentiment. The wheel had simply turned its circle, for it was Pietersen who dropped Warne at Old Trafford and England would have won had he held on.
However ferociously the fi re burned within Warne and whatever the utter brilliance he brought to the series, it seemed to be England’s time. Michael Vaughan lost one toss that did not much matter ( Lord’s), another that Ricky Ponting apparently failed to register (Edgbaston), but then won three that mattered greatly. He led his team magnificently, sensing fortune and opportunity at every corner and, until the end, luxuriated in the naming of an unchanged team. He had a group of cricketers on the rise, eager to challenge champions who, we now know, were in decline.
Only Warne could summon his best against the upstarts perhaps partly because he is, and always will be, one of them himself. It was Warne’s infectious enthusiasm, nothing else, which kept the Australians alive and his sheer bloodymindedness that made each game so tight. Without him, the injury to Glenn McGrath and the weather, England would have won four-one. When Michael Parkinson wrote, on these pages recently, of Warne in the same league as Pele, Muhammad Ali and Jack Nicklaus, he was not wrong.
The fi rst real sign that the upstarts meant business came in the Twenty20 match at the Rose Bowl. Demonic eyes and hostile intent greeted unprepared tourists who lost a very short game by 100 runs, which is a very long way. Sadistic celebrations accompanied the fall of each Australian wicket and a huge crowd caught the fever. Far from arriving to a red carpet, Australia were offered a black hole. At Edgbaston, during the one-day series, Simon Jones retrieved Matthew Hayden’s drive in his follow-through and hurled it back at him. Hayden went berserk but, before he got to Jones, Andrew Strauss and Paul Collingwood intercepted him and said their piece. We should have known then that England were not to be put upon.
At Lord’s in the fi rst Test, the pattern continued. England were overtly unsympathetic to the cut on Ponting’s face after Steve Harmison had nailed him with a bouncer. Later, from mid-off, Vaughan threw so wildly at the stumps that Warne, the batsman, had to dive for cover. When Vaughan’s turn came to bat, the Australians went at him for this but the England captain stared them down, even telling Ponting that he was no Steve Waugh in the sledging stakes.
The air between the sides fi zzed with electricity. It took Andrew Flintoff and Brett Lee to unplug it. England’s point had been made, however. They were not submissive — far from it — and in Pietersen, the South African without 16 years of hurt to consider, Vaughan had found the perfect ally for the in- your- face approach he was promoting.
The Australians must have felt they were looking in a mirror. Aggressive batting, well thought-out and superbly directed fast bowling and sheer unflinching will were being thrown at them every minute of every hour of every day. Having had it so easy for so long, they — who do not include the leg- spinner — seemed unable to respond. Even that fabled Australian clarity of mind went AWOL. “ We’ll bowl,” said Ponting madly at Edgbaston, having seen the coin land in his favour on a good and grassless pitch without Glenn McGrath. It was either madness or arrogance.
For all this, for all the sweat-induced tension of Old Trafford and Trent Bridge, the ongoing uncertainty about McGrath and the obvious, near chronic lack of form within the Australian team, England could not shake them off. In fact, so resolute are these gum- chewers, that when Warne snared Flintoff on the stroke of lunch on Monday, Australia were suddenly, frighteningly favourites to retain the wretched little urn — which is what it felt like over a funereal lunch break. “ Ashes? Pah, forget ’ em. Been a great series, good for cricket, the game’s the winner…” And then Pietersen rode into town, the three-times reprieved, free-spirited Pietersen who the almighty Warne himself had told us must play — “he can hurt us, he can hurt us”. Oh, such almighty prophecy from the almighty, to paint the town red. Inexorably and — so quickly it seemed — inevitably, Monday became Pietersen day.
With an eye for a ball that even Viv Richards might not have possessed and with an audacity that only Richards might have had, a South African in an English coat and with hair of many colours scored exactly what a coloured South African scored for England against Australia on the same ground 37 years ago. Because of Basil D’Oliveira’s innings the world changed. Pietersen may not have such effect but he catalysed the changing of the guard and ensured that a nation could bask in its new-found love for an old and irresistible game.
We must not forget the depths of despair from whence this achievement came. In 1999 at the same Oval ground, Nasser Hussain was booed for being captain of a hopeless, soulless England team. Around the same time, Freddie was more a pebble than a Flintstone and Duncan Fletcher — who? — had not begun in the job. Now England are the best team in the world, of whom Hussain talks and writes incisively. Fletcher is a master tactician and the supreme man-manager. Flintoff is the best cricketer on the planet and we love him. Best of all, the boos have turned to cheers in Trafalgar Square. Cricket is the new black, enjoy it while it lasts.