This time last week Kevin Pietersen was just another ego, strutting towards an embarrassing middle age in preparation for his departure to the great trailer park in the sky.
Pietersen has hurled enough chutzpah at dear old cricket to establish himself as one of the game’s rock stars. That achievement is all the more impressive because he has done so despite an eminently punchable personality.
So, good luck to him: well done, Kev, you deserve it.
Even if your main reason for leaving South Africa had less to do with the sanctimonious crap you spouted about the politics of sport than the fact that you were unhappy with the contract offered by the Dolphins all those years ago.
On that score Pietersen had it damn straight — he was worth so much more than we thought. As we now know, somewhere in the soul of the mediocre off-spinner he used to be lurked the rampant lion he has become.
He has done superbly well for an oke who sprang from the wilds of Westville, Durban’s model of middle-class bliss where hunting and gathering a parking spot at Pavilion mall can turn ordinary citizens into guerrillas in our midst.
Not long after he made his leap to Mud Island in 2000, Pietersen bent his Seffrican accent into an unreasonable facsimile of the odd dialect spoken in Middle England. Soon he festooned himself with tattoos that served to proclaim him 100% Pom.
He embraced his ersatz Englishness with all the passion of a bergie clutching a brown paper bag to his chest as if it covered the bottle that held the last few drops of cheap wine on Earth.
Then came the latest exciting episode in Pietersen’s life. It unfolded, largely, because of Graeme Smith.
Where does a man — who gives the impression that he knows only cricket — summon an innings of such greatness as the one that the South African captain played at Edgbaston?
We know Smith is a brave batsman and a captain who soaks up pressure and hard work like a barman armed with a fresh dishcloth.
But, in the space of five-and-a-half hours at the crease in Birmingham, he put himself far above those considerations.
Smith played with the kind of rock-solid nerve seen often from taxi drivers in the emergency lane at rush hour.
He plotted and planned his innings with cold determination and the look in his eye could have burned a hole in a battleship.
As satisfying and as welcome as South Africa’s victory was, it was all a little disconcerting for those who sometimes wonder whether Smith has the gumption to lead a Test team. Yes, this correspondent included. It is hoped that Smith’s innings will be remembered forever by those who saw it. That should stop us from saying stupid things about him.
It is also hoped that Smith has a firm enough grasp of irony to appreciate the role he has played in Pietersen’s elevation to the England captaincy.
No sooner had the series been won and lost than the chin that Michael Vaughan doesn’t have wobbled tearfully in front of the sponsors’ banner at a press conference.
His risible contribution in the series of 40 runs in five innings would probably have blipped under the radar had England managed to win one of the first three Tests. They should have won at Lord’s, but South Africa threw up an impregnable wall of defence.
That gave the Proteas the motivation they needed to go out and win at Headingly, which in turn put them on a roll for Edgbaston.
Had England picked the spectacularly mercurial Steve Harmison — hereby rechristened Shotgun Sally — for the third Test they might be trying to draw the series at the Oval and Vaughan might have kept his job.
Instead we have a live match on our hands, although the series already belongs to South Africa. The spark is provided by the fact that Smith and Pietersen would sooner share a lift with a smelly fart than with each other. That’s because they are as alike a pair of chops as ever snuggled up on a braai grid.
Both are motivated by opponents’ aggression, both deal in hyperbolic strokeplay and both demand that the world loves them.
Significant chunks of the world will do just that. But, as Smith could easily tell Pietersen, other chunks will detest him.
If England are winning — as they might well do at the Oval — all will be well for the skipper. But he already has a few enemies in the shadows and their number can only grow given Pietersen’s penchant for pissing people off.
As sure as death, taxes and a Jacob Zuma presidency, they will get their day.