”He was always hardcore,” Mike Bechet says as he remembers coaching the teenage Kevin Pietersen at Maritzburg College. There is a small echo of awe in Bechet’s voice as he describes a schoolboy cricketer he initially doubted but ultimately exalted.
”Kevin’s a hell of an aggressive guy. People call it arrogance. But I call it dog-fight. He stands there and says ‘Get in my way and I’ll knock you over’ or ‘Give me a chance and I’ll blow you away.’ He’s got those same little mannerisms now that he had then.”
Pietersen, in his explosive new role as an England one-day international, has this year laid waste to various South African and Australian attacks. His destructive exuberance was epitomised by last month’s match-winning 91 not out off 65 balls, which gave England real belief they no longer need to be intimidated by Australia. Pietersen, who turned 25 last week, presented irrefutable evidence that he should be drafted into England’s Test side for the Ashes.
”Maybe 100 guys in England have the talent to play Test cricket,” Bechet suggests, ”but only a handful have the mental toughness to face down [Glenn] McGrath calling your mother a bitch. KP can look McGrath in the eye with the attitude that says ”If you want to get me out, you’d better get a gun.’ He had that as a 17-year-old. I’ll tell you what I wrote about him when we sent him out into the big wide world.”
Bechet, the director of sport at College since 1981, reads his end-of-year summary for 1997 with chuckling nostalgia. ”As an off-spinner Kevin bowled with intelligence and aggression — as he did with his batting. Bowlers screaming in his face didn’t faze him. He would tell them they’d better get ready to fetch the next ball straight out of the trees — just like the last one he’d hit for six.”
Pietersen was electrifying. Pietermaritzburg, however, was different. Tom Sharpe, the writer, who once lived in Pietermaritzburg, loves to say it is half the size of a New York cemetery and twice as dead. It is more notorious for being the location where Mahatma Gandhi was forced to leave a whites-only train carriage in 1893 — in a humiliating incident that became the source of his embrace of passive resistance.
Pietersen, instead, has been blisteringly active in resisting the setbacks that have shaped his career. It is revealing to hear Bechet explain that, even as a schoolboy, Pietersen was beset by the same ambivalence that shrouds England’s Test selectors.
Bechet has produced Test cricketers before — Jonty Rhodes being his most famous former student — but he is remarkably candid about the mistake he made in failing at first to pick Pietersen.
”At the age of 16, I didn’t think Kevin was quite good enough. Even in his final year of school, aged 17, I kept him in the second team behind a little leg-spinner called Matthew Cairns who emigrated to New Zealand at the end of the first term. Kevin was not happy about being overlooked but he worked incredibly hard and was ultra-competitive. When I finally selected him he came over and said, ‘Thanks for the chance — I’m going to show you now.’ And he did. Kevin made me regret not picking him until the last five matches.
”He burst from nowhere into the Natal Schools team. There’s no doubt he should have made the South African schools side that year — but the [racial] quota system screwed him. He ended up being picked for the academy side — effectively a ‘B’ team. I hope England don’t make the same error by only picking him for the one-dayers.”
Errol Stewart, the former South African one-day international, was among the next group to be astonished by Pietersen’s ferocious talent. ”He arrived at my club, Berea Rovers, straight out of school. In his first game I batted number three and was 70 not out when Kevin, coming in at four, got to the crease. I’ve got to laugh when I tell you he still reached his hundred before me. Unbelievable!
”As a senior player for Natal I was pretty instrumental in getting Kevin moved up to provincial level. He was a cricketer of immense ability and self-belief. I remember him rocking up one day, when he was still a 19-year-old amateur, and he was so excited to show me his new business card. It said ‘Kevin Pietersen — Professional Cricketer’. In his head he was already somebody special.”
Pietersen made his debut for Natal against England in December 1999 when, batting at number nine, he scored 61 not out off 57 balls, hitting four sixes. His subsequent progress was stymied by the quota system.
”Kevin was disillusioned,” Bechet says. ”He was in and out of the Natal Dolphins side and even when he got a game he batted at 10. That’s absurd.”
In 2000, Pietersen was drifting aimlessly when his life suddenly changed. Nottinghamshire’s coach, Clive Rice, heard that Pietersen was playing club cricket in Birmingham.
”I first saw him at the SA Schools week in 1997,” Rice recalls, ”and noticed something special. I also knew he had a British passport through his English mother. So I got a number for him and told him straight: ‘KP, I’m sending you a contract to play county cricket for Notts. I don’t want you to come on trial. I want you to sign this contract, play for Notts and then, after four years, you’ll be eligible for England.
”He jumped at the chance and scored five centuries and a couple of double-hundreds in his first season. KP takes no prisoners.”
In 2003, with Rice no longer at Trent Bridge, an increasingly disenchanted Pietersen threatened to walk out of Notts with 12 months left of his four-year contract. Angered by the team’s seeming mediocrity, Pietersen was also worn down by the jibes at his changing national identity. He was regularly made to stand in the dressing room and belt out God Save the Queen — which he did with word-perfect gusto.
His newfound fame — quickened by his self-proclaimed ”rapper chic” and trailer-trash strut — instils the only cautionary note in Rice.
”When it happens like this, so fast, you need guidance. In England the media can build you up to a [David] Beckham-like status and then, bang, they bring you down. I’m going to tell KP to tread very carefully.”
Stewart, who remains, like Rice, in close contact with Pietersen, senses a deeper cultural confusion. ”He’s gone overboard in this fierce passion for England — while denying South Africa. He’s trying desperately to prove his commitment to England. But I know how much he’s missing the Durban beaches and South Africa itself. As he matures he’ll hopefully reconcile these two sides of his identity.”— Â