It should be no surprise that Trent Bridge’s new floodlights were not turned on on Tuesday night because that is the way of England cricket at the moment. Nothing, not even the best floodlights in the country, can outshine Kevin Pietersen.
Pietersen’s selection as England captain was universally viewed as a high-risk appointment, a reliance upon a man with high standards, higher ambitions and a record of volatility if things began to go wrong.
It was a decision that England might never have been brave enough to plan, but one that they were forced to grasp after the sudden double resignation of Michael Vaughan and Paul Collingwood left them with nowhere to turn. So far, the effect has been miraculous.
Pietersen tells it as it is. He did not use England’s routing of South Africa for 83 to utter platitudes about gradual progress. He dared to say: ”It was a remarkable victory, one to be enjoyed, because we are always on the receiving end of thrashings like that in the four or five years I have played one-day internationals. We have never hammered a team as convincingly as that before.”
One by one, England’s players are turning up to play for Pietersen, and basking in the praise and affection that he lavishes upon them shamelessly when things go well.
Steve Harmison has come out of one-day retirement and is bowling with focus, sharing the middle overs with his old mate, Andrew Flintoff. Out of sorts with the bat all season, Flintoff bludgeoned a crucial half-century at Headingley. Here Stuart Broad put a difficult summer behind him with one of England’s best bowling returns in one-day history.
”It is brilliant the way the guys have turned things around since Vaughanie and Colly resigned. I think I am very fortunate to have four guys bowling together at 145km/h. They fill the fielders with so much happiness. I am sure that if previous captains had had them firing on all cylinders at the start of their campaigns, they’d have been all right.”
A man with a reputation for being a bit mouthy then had the presence of mind to say: ”The key to this is not for us to gob off about this or anything, because we haven’t won the series.”
England players must be queuing up to have breakfast with him, imagining that a few inspirational words over the muesli can transform their fortunes.
On Tuesday it was Matt Prior’s turn — the Sussex wicketkeeper took a stupendous, springing catch in front of first slip to dismiss Herschelle Gibbs, better than anything he produced in the first, largely unrewarding chapter of his England career.
Pietersen knows that Prior is a fine batsman, whose wicketkeeping last time was not up to scratch — so why hide the fact? Or, as he put it: ”I had breakfast with Matty. He is in a really good place at the moment. He has turned up a different guy. It has been a headache about wicketkeepers recently but let’s hope he stays good because he is a hell of a batsman.
”The thing that I am trying to tell Matty, and drum into the young players, is that it is really great to be on the top of a wave, but you have to try and get that level where you are cool and calm and responsible, to do and deliver, day in, day out. I said to Matty that it was an amazing catch, but he had another job to do in 20 seconds.”
The demeanour of Graeme Smith, South Africa’s captain, greatly contrasted with that of Pietersen. ”When you play like we did today — people paid a lot of money for the tickets and they would have been very disappointed there wasn’t a better game,” he said. —