Will the second-best T20 batsman in England go to the World Cup?

England are now so good, they can admit out loud that certain Test matches mean more than others regardless of what they charge for the tickets, the staging fee or the TV rights, and they can divest themselves of their best T20 batsman, a man in no small part responsible for their only ever international title, in the pincers of contractual small-print. Either that, or hubris is beginning to set in.

They might go to Sri Lanka for the title defence without their second-best T20 batsman too, because that is Owais Shah and they don't seem to like him much, either. But the great meritocracy of sport sends its messages whether they are acknowledged or not and on Shah the free market has spoken. Pietersen aside, he is the one successful English player in the IPL. He has been bought on four different occasions by four different teams, and this year got his first decent run, for Rajasthan Royals. He played 13 games and made 340 runs at almost 38, at a strike rate of 132. That put him inside the top 20 batters in the tournament. In the Big Bash, where he played for Hobart, he averaged 70 at a rate of 150 over eight games.

At the crease he is a magnificent oddity, a one-off, a wired bundle of quirks and ticks, eyes wide and brain burning with the sheer range of possibilities he brings to each delivery. Last year he played the shot of the season at Chelmsford, a defensive prod that went over the stand. With his limber wrists, he might just have easily got the same ball through fine leg, or slipped it past third man. Equally, on another day, it might have struck him plumb in front, or been popped back to the bowler from a leading edge. In attitude, in approach, in appearance, he is an enigma; in short, everything that England distrusts.

The other day, he came in for Essex in a CB40 match with the game won and Ravi Bopara on a hundred. He played incredibly straight; his bat looked like a barn door. He flicked one to the boundary, took a few singles and did nothing really extraordinary, but that was sort of the point: even in so little there was something about it that illuminated Bopara's conventionality. Bopara is very good, and his desire and attitude deserves respect. But the shimmer of something extra.... no, it was all down the other end.

More than any other format, because it is condensed and amplified, T20 cricket needs that something extra, some dynamism from players who will walk the tightrope. Pietersen did, Eoin Morgan does, and so does Shah. It's a quality that's most effective and magnetic when the player has learned to control it, to bring it out when it's needed, and Shah seems to be at that point now.

He should replace KP, but he won't. In fact, they should both play, but neither will. Last year, in the post about Shah's shot of the season at Chelmsford, I wrote that he had 'a racehorse temperament' that had stopped him playing more for England. This was disputed in an anonymous first-person response underneath. I have no idea whether it was genuine or not (it's still there, if you scroll down) but I regret writing it now anyway: it's too glib a description of a complex player. Shah has made his case in the arena where it counts. Wonder if England are going to notice?

Would David Gower get in this England team, and other arguments

David Gower is, I think, the first cricketer whose entire international career I was able to watch. I don't quite recall Botham's debut, but I do Gower's, which began, as no-one needs reminding, with a first ball pull for four off a bowler called Liaqat Ali, whose sole contribution to cricket history this seems to be - an unfortunate quiz-question of a career, that.

All of the rest of that era - Willis, Gooch, Boycott, Knott etc - were already playing, but Gower, yup, I was there for the lot. It came to mind when reading Andrew Miller's piece at cricinfo on how good the current England side are. The general feeling seemed to be that this is a workmanlike team profiting in an era of flat tracks and non-lethal bowling, and it's a valid view to have. How many of those Indian pies would Goochie have gorged himself on? Loads, probably, if he could have got the strike off of Geoffrey and his stick of rhubarb.

But whenever these arguments emerge, two things happen, one obvious and one not quite so. The first is that we are remembering men in their prime, at their best, and sometimes with that lovely, melancholic air of what the Portuguese call 'saudade', which is a kind of nostalgia for something that never really happened. The second is that the older set of men have the advantage of being judged on the whole of their time, rather than the cross-section of the current team.

So taking a kind of composite, early 80s England XI that may never have actually taken the field together [I would check, but, you know...] which of them would have got into the current team? Beginning with the non-arguments: Ian Botham would get into any England side of any era, first name on the sheet. Disregarding the captaincy for now, Boycott would displace Andrew Strauss. As much fun as they were, Mike Gatting and Allan Lamb, with Test averages in the 30s, would not crack this middle order. John Emburey would yield to Graeme Swann; Geoff Miller would make it only as a selector [at which he is very good] and Phil Edmonds could tough it out with Monty Panesar for the non-playing spinner's role. Mike Hendrick, who never took a Test five-fer despite his niggardly ways, and Chris Old, with his legendary propensity for an injury, could not survive in this day of bowling units. Alan Knott and Bob Taylor were sublime glovemen, but this is the modern era, and Matthew Prior is a far superior batsman to both, even Knotty, with his pre-Chanderpaul, crab-like efforts.

Which leaves Willis, Gooch and Gower. The Goose had the one thing that the current attack lacks - out and out pace, and so could displace Bresnan. And Gooch and Gower would walk in, right...?

Er, well... Gooch is a leviathan of English batting, remembered as much for the first-class runs he scored - a figure no current player will approach - as anything else. But his Test match career was one of two halves, and we don't yet have the benefit of Alastair Cook's second half. Cook has played 72 Tests, scoring 5868 runs at 49.72, with 19 hundreds and 26 fifties. After 72 matches, Gooch had 4714 at 37.41 with eight hundreds and 29 fifties.

And would Gower bat at four or five? At four is KP, with 6361 runs from 78 matches at 50.48, with 19 hundreds and 25 fifties. after 78 games, Gower had 5523 runs at 45.27 with 12 hundreds and 26 fifties. Pietersen already has more hundreds than Gower would go on and make.

At five is Ian Bell, with 5027 runs from 69 matches at 49.28 with 16 hundreds and 28 fifties. At a similar moment, Gower had 4543 runs at 42.06 with nine hundreds and 23 fifties.

These are not definitive comparisons but are more even than looking at the completed careers of one set of players against the incomplete records of others. Now the main argument for the records of the older players being reassessed: the quality of bowling. Gooch and Gower, you can argue, faced one of the most daunting attacks of all-time in West Indies. Here, Gooch is impressive, with an average of 44.83 as opposed to his overall mark of 42.58. Gower though averaged considerably less - 32.82 against a career 44.25. Gooch's weak point was against Australia, where he averaged 33.31, having encountered Lillie and Thomson early on.

Now consider Kevin Pietersen, who has played against one of the great Australian sides, plus in Warne and Murali, the two most productive bowlers ever. Against Australia he averages 52.71. His low comes against South Africa, at 'just' 42.71.

Cook and Bell can't claim to have competed as well against the very best around, yet their records are both on a sharp upward curve, and their scoring of hundreds is relentless.

Ultimately, if you're choosing on aesthetics, Gooch would come in for Cook, and Gower for Pietersen. However, Pietersen is, I think, better than Gower, and the rest of his career will prove it. An aesthetic choice between Gower and Bell is tougher, but I would suggest that Gower is the more hardened player. His ratio of hundreds to fifties though, 18 to 39, would weigh against him in the mind of a pragmatist like Andy Flower.

It's a daft argument in the end, but here's another: the real choice should perhaps be between the sides of 2005 and 2011. That would be a far closer contest.

Being hit in the face, and other good times...

It's funny how a small and insignificant incident in a game can send you off into a reverie, a time-trip back into the long-lost, half-forgotten past to a moment when something similar happened, a distant event that somehow triggers another sense-memory which surfaces from that place in the brain where it has lingered and never quite left...

There I was watching Kevin Pietersen bat in the Twenty20 when he wandered off to the edge of the pitch, outside the line of the ball, and managed to top-edge it into the grill of his helmet, a sort of vertical flip-sweep that would have cost him his pearly-whites had it not been for the lid, and I felt a little tingle in my bottom lip, where there is an inch-long, pale-white scar from many years ago when the same thing happened to me... It wasn't exactly the same sort of shot - how could it be - but it was a sweep, played to a gentle off-spinner who I didn't think could get me out, so I got down on one knee and swept hard, but the ball must have just popped a little from the dry midsummer wicket and taken the edge of the bat before flying up into my mouth...

...There was a bit of gash, but it didn't seem like much and it didn't really hurt, just stung a little, so I carried on... I have no memory now of how long, or how I got out or how many I scored or whether we won, or any of those things... what I remember is getting home and trying to eat a chinese but giving up because by then it felt like I had a tennis ball in my mouth, and of the next time I played when I noticed that there were some bloodstains on the inside of one of my pads that stayed there for years [loved those pads, had to retire them gently in the end, like laying down a favourite shield]...

...That sent me off to another match on the same ground, fielding at slip to another off-spinner and watching the batsman go for a cut and then coming round on the ground because a top edge had flown up and hit me in the forehead, to the great hilarity of everyone that saw it - no health and safety in those days - oh, the embarrassment of that... and then another game, again on the same ground, where I got done by an outrageous slower ball that seemed to take forever to get down the pitch and bowled me - another laugh then, that time from their wicket-keeper - and then yet another game when I almost got shown up by a dolly catch at mid-off that I got too far underneath but just managed to grab with a jump and a fingertip...

All things that I'd forgotten, or thought I'd forgotten, but that came back in an instant after KP flicked that ball into his face, and then he laughed and the bowler laughed too, and we all thought yes.... this is the game... this is the game...

KP: Lap of the gods

'The wheel has to turn,' Kevin Pietersen said simply, and it has. In the 15 innings he's played since the 227 in Adelaide, he has made three of his four highest Test scores and his average is back above 50. His knock yesterday summoned all of his quirky brilliance, and also the pernicious nature of cricket's gods.

There really is no other way to think about the game sometimes. No-one works harder than KP, and to overcome his long drought, he went back to the book. Both of his double hundreds, plus his 85 at the Rose Bowl against Sri Lanka [an equally high-quality innings], were most notable for the way he determined to hit everything down the ground. There is no better principal to abide by, and none better to watch.

With his swagger back, he spent the first part of his innings yesterday determined to ignore it. Ishant Sharma almost bowled him round his legs several times. Last ball before lunch he blundered into the most obvious leg slip trap ever set. On 88 he screwed a hoick just wide of mid-off. He hit the second ball after tea straight up in the air, having gone to hundred from the first. At times Bell made him look like an oaf.

Any and all of these incidents would have done for him when his luck was down and the wheel was yet to turn. What was intriguing about this almost endlessly fascinating player was his willingness to ride his luck, almost to trust it. There's a part of batting that is about fatalism, about the nature of chance, and Pietersen more than most seems willing to allow it to be part of his game. He really is extraordinary.

There always has to be a story

Something strange happened when Kevin Pietersen walked out to bat on Monday evening - at least it would have been strange had you been reading the papers. He was applauded, warmly, all the way to the crease, and then cheered equally warmly as he played out the final hour or so to set up his innings today.

It was strange, because if you took your perception of the fans' opinion of KP from the media, you might have been surprised at this unequivocal support. You may also have been under the impression that Pietersen was under pressure for his place, because again, this was the media line.

There has to be a story, because this is how the media works. It's interesting that the most intuitive piece on KP was a simpatico analysis from Mike Brearley in the Observer. This was the story that tuned in best to both the public's and the dressing room's view of KP, and yet it stood alone. Brearley, of course, is not a member of the regular press pack.

There is a question worth asking about the press position on KP: who was the last batsman to be dropped from the England Test team? The answer, excluding injury replacements, is Ravi Bopara in the Ashes of 2009. Before that, it was probably Ian Bell, who pushed selectorial patience beyond the limit in Jamaica. Andrew Strauss, Alastair Cook, Paul Collingwood and Jonathan Trott [in South Africa] were all nursed through lengthy droughts, as Pietersen would have been. His drought, comparatively, has been less severe, yet this point was rarely made.

So did the media want Pietersen to be dropped? As individuals, probably not. But as a story, it would have gone big and KP felt its weight. Like football, the media agenda for cricket is now short-term, even as the England team's strategy stretches the other way.

If Pietersen continues to revive, he will leave a vacuum behind him. It may be filled, even more remarkably, by Andrew Strauss. For the media, his retirement from short-form cricket loosens his grip on power. Now, his dismissals by left-arm bowlers are lining up behind him as more ammunition. A full two Test matches after an Ashes win for the ages, whispers are beginning.

Strauss has got out to a lot of left-arm over bowlers, and like Pietersen, he has a technical issue to address. But batting is a process not a destination, and things change all the time. A generation ago Strauss would have faced Wasim Akram and very few others. In the last year he has encountered Bollinger, Johnson, Amir and Welegedera with Zaheer Khan to come. He is an opener, and openers get out to opening bowlers.

This short-termism is not so much the fault of the journalists as the the wider media, which has increased in speed to keep pace with life. The culture in general is more disposable and it burns through information in its many forms. The England Test team does not run at sufficient speed for its purposes, and a gap between the story and reality is emerging. There always has to be a story, but increasingly, it's created by the authors rather than their subjects.

KP And The Ambiguous Frontlash

73*, 53, 42*, 47. A little run of figures there that may be worth remembering, although with the short-termism that infects other sporting media showing itself more often in cricket now, they probably won't be.

They represent Kevin Pietersen's last four innings at the T20 World Cup all the way back in the dim and distant past that is last May. They sit quite nicely alongside his Man Of The Tournament trophy and England's only global limited-overs title. Within them is the utter destruction he wrought on the world's quickest bowlers, summed up when, in the final, he walked down the pitch to Shaun Tate and dumped him into the crowd over long-off. The last of the fight went out of Tate then.

Pietersen's first innings in the competition, by contrast, were 24 and 9. As he has done throughout his career, he became caught up in the escalating tension and euphoria of the game and delivered when it mattered. The list of those occasions is long, and stretches back to his ODI breakthrough in South Africa. His batting is studded with such moments. He is that rarest of beasts - the big-match man. The prime years of his playing life, the early 30s in which most batsmen are at their most productive, will answer one lingering question: is KP a great player, or simply a player of great innings?

Yet the ambiguity of the media towards him runs deep. Yesterday saw a series of pieces on the theme 'are England better off without KP?' - an idiotic question that was answered in one radio poll with a 95 per cent 'no'. The punters are ahead of the curve on this one. Andy Flower's fairly standard remarks on the matter have seen a variety of hacks desperate to imply a subtext that supports their theory that England are glad to be shot of him. Flower, the arch pragmatist, is merely playing the hand he's been dealt.

No team is better off without their most galvanising player. England can still do well, but the ultimate marker of a man's worth is the view of those who have to face him. Bowlers like Tate, Steyn, Lee, Zaheer and the others who've run in to him when the chips are down will look at the teamsheet and smile.

NB: Simon Hughes has a far better piece in the Telegraph on England's current state. No wonder the players are getting fractious....

KP: Year Zero, Ball One

In club cricket opening is the only place to bat, as any fule no. If I'm not opening, I'm not playing, pal. It offers the opportunity [not often taken, admittedly, but glorious when it is] to do what Virender Sehwag did in the first match of this World Cup - play a swaggering, gratifying, alpha-male innings whilst developing some sort of injury that gets you out of fielding later on.

Club cricket is for the most part a short game, hence the imperative not to waste any of it. In the pro ranks there's always another innings, but the shape of 50 over cricket gives opening an appeal that other formats don't for the alpha batsman. In Test cricket it is the ultimate examination of skill and nerve, and thus suited only to certain players with particular temperaments. In T20 matches, someone always gets out early, so the number three is essentially an opener too. In 50 over cricket, though, its appeal glistens in a particular way: the powerplays, the high-vis new ball that cracks off the bat, the bowler concerned with defence and attack, the chance to build and pace an innings.

It's no surprise then that many of the biggest, most anticipated and feared batters of the modern era open in ODIs: Hayden, Gayle, Gilchrist, Sehwag, Tendulkar, McCullum, Watson, Jayasuriya [the proto-ODI opener] and so on. No surprise either that KP fancied adding his name to the list.

It's a smart move in lots of ways. It suits his game on the sub-continent, it offers him a challenge, it boosts his misunderstood psyche. Pietersen is indisputably a big-game player, recently to the exclusion of almost everything else. As the T20 world cup proved, he's well suited to tournament cricket, with its unfolding narrative and building momentum. He's somehow attuned to things like that. For a deeply idiosyncratic man, the most idiosyncratic place in the order might be perfect.

KP: Naturally disappointed

"It's a fuck up..."

"While I'm naturally disappointed to have been omitted from the England squad I fully understand the reasons why..."

Between those two sentences, both attributed to Kevin Pietersen, lies the work of the ECB media relations department. Say what you like about the rest of the ECB, those media relations boys know their gig. Into their cavernous depersonalisation machine goes the phrase 'it's a fuck up...'. At the other end emerges, 'I am naturally disappointed...'

KP's true feelings do not expose the media department. Their many hundreds of press releases per season contain not one word that could actually have been uttered by a genuine human being, let alone a professional cricketer. But they do reveal a rare bad day for Andy Flower, Geoff Miller and the selectors. The thinking behind Pietersen's exclusion is sound. He will go to Surrey and have the chance of a couple of first-class games and the opportunity to bat for a long time, probably with Mark Ramprakash. It will do him more good than reverting to slog mode for a couple of T20s and the ridiculous number of ODIs [Five? Do we really need five?] that will be now be played out by one side that's suspicious of the other and one side that will be absolutely shattered whatever happens.

Yet before this morning ['what a fuck up'], they obviously hadn't sat down and explained it to him. Pietersen is a sensitive man, low on confidence. He needs to be handled gently, and you would have expected Flower, if not Miller, to have realised that.

A poor day for the selectors was rounded out by the choice of Steve Davies, re-opening the ODI wicketkeeper debate for the 3,708th time [note to subs: check precise figure with ECB media dept.] There is a consistency of selection in the Test side that is lacking here. What exactly did Kieswetter do wrong, except suffer a small dip after the World Cup win? It's a question he's entitled to ask, and Miller should be expected to answer, ideally without passing his comments through the media department first.

KP: Blood on the carpet

Tales of hubris and arrogance involving KP aren't particularly rare, and yesterday provided another one. Yet all of it this time is emanating from Hampshire, who don't want to pick him for T20 finals day on saturday because it might 'disrupt the line up'.

Notts have no such worries about using Broad and Swann, and as a result more than a third of their side will have the experience of playing in a World Cup final.

Hampshire are ignoring the opportunity of reuniting two of England's top three, and are turning their back on the man of the tournament in the West Indies. But there are surely only two questions they need to ask: is Pietersen motivated? Will he improve the team? The answer to both is surely yes. He needs an innings and the platform is one he responds to.

The settled side argument put forward by Hampshire is a smokescreen. It wasn't settled enough to stop them paying big money for Abdul Razzaq, and Lumb has only just come back from being dropped. In truth, they don't want to play Pietersen because he's leaving, and was brusque in the way he announced it. Why not just say so, in that case?

There are no cricketing reasons for him not to play, and Hampshire are a professional team, not a club side. Sentiment plays no part in pro cricket - as Alistair Cook is likely to find out when the Essex team sheet goes up...

KP: getting the fever

Ashes fever has some men in its strange grip already. A delerium is drifting through the English media. Some of them even think Kevin Pietersen should be dropped.

As Shane Warne said yesterday, averages don't tell you everything, but they are instructive. Pietersen's 'slump' over the past year has seen him average 42 in Test cricket, a figure also known as the career stat for the other batsmen in the top six. There was also the matter of his man of the series performance in the T20 World Cup as more evidence, as if it were needed, of his big game temperament. The misinterpretation of his ego has been reflected on before, and Mike Brearley put a calm hand on the fevered brow yesterday too.

Those figures, anyway. Against Australia, Strauss averages 38, Collingwood 35, Cook 25 and Trott, from a couple of innings an unrepresentative 80. Of the side's much discussed 'depth', Ian Bell averages 25 and Ravi Bopara 15. Pietersen has made 1,116 runs against them at 50.72.

Warnie's point was that it's when you make the runs that counts. Strauss was the only man on either side to make two hundreds in the 2005 series and he got another in 2009. Collingwood has a double hundred in Australia. Trott made a hundred on debut. Pietersen has hundreds home and away. The ingenue Morgan has an ODI century against them.

By contrast, Bopara melted and Bell, who has played against them more times than Pietersen, has one innings of note, in the first dig at the Oval. He has passed 50 eight times without making a hundred, and in one more game than Pietersen, he has scored almost 500 fewer runs.

If England can get their best side on the park, they have a fair chance. It's a chance than thins with proper examination of their 'depth'. KP will be fine and is key as ever. The problem positions are at two and three in the order, and neither Bell or Bopara can bat there, as any stat you like will tell you.

KP: not working geographically

Every club has one - the bloke who plays about twice a season, and when he does, turns up in a sports car and expects to bat number three. Hampshire got rid of theirs yesterday.

'Geographically it doesn't work,' sniffed KP. 'I live in Chelsea'.

'We haven't seen as much of KP as we'd like,' said Hampshire chief exec Rod Bransgrove, a master of understatement. Pietersen played a T20 game for Hants last week - the first time he'd turned out for them since May 2008. It was obvious something was afoot when KP arrived at the ground [in a sports car, natch] and Hampshire didn't have any kit ready for him. It wasn't as if no-one knew he was coming.

Hampshire's point is simple: Pietersen plays for England, not them. He is released so rarely, they must feel a bit like Tom Jones's wife - always waiting for him to come home. The ECB even stopped him attending a 45-minute fan Q&A before next week's one-dayer at the Rosebowl. The odd bit of glory they get from having his name on the squad list is no longer enough of a pay-off.

And KP lives in Chelsea of course, which for the uninitiated is about an hour and half's spin down the M3 from the Rosebowl. Less, probably, in a sports car. It's also legal in England for him to live closer to the ground.

Now that KP doesn't do travel, he'll be turning out [or not, actually] for either Surrey or Middlesex next year. A better solution might be for him to remain unattached. Plenty of counties would be prepared to give him a game on the rare occasions he's available, but then the thought of Surrey is pretty irresistible too: KP and Ramps in the middle order? I'd buy a ticket...

Where KP's at

Even if they rarely write the same thing, both Vic Marks and J-Rod had it right about Kevin Pietersen's batting against Bangladesh. It was a mad combo of boredom versus the utter determination not to be subjugated by what he saw as lesser bowlers.

I have a small wager on KP to end the year as top Test runscorer, based on his being fully fit again, the improvements he's made to his technique and the amount of cricket England have. Also factored in is his undisguised desire for greatness. I think it's still a good bet, although his lack of a hundred since last March has some people questioning him.

As his career has that halfway feel to it, and as comparisons with other England players are pointless, I ran a little progress check: KP versus King Viv, Sachin, Lara, Ponting and Viru Sehwag at similar stages of their career:

M I runs ave 100 50

IVA Richards 73 110 5579 53.64 18 23
BC Lara 64 110 5431 51.23 13 27
RT Ponting 70 109 4983 50.96 17 18
SR Tendulkar 70 109 5380 55.46 20 21
V Sehwag 64 110 5508 51.44 15 15
KP Pietersen 61 110 5102 49.05 16 18

While he has the lowest average, Pietersen still stacks up well in exalted company. Richards was in his fulsome pomp at the time, with his average and weight of scoring just peaking. Most of the others were about to enter the most productive phases as batsmen, an altitude that Sachin has almost maintained, but that Ponting has spent the last couple of years of his career slipping from.

For Viru and KP though, the next three or four years glow enticingly ahead.

The existential nightmare of fielding [part 347]

'Never mind the spectators being bored, we as players are bored fielding. It's almost pointless'.

Kevin Pietersen on overs 15-35 in one-day internationals, thus revealing two truths in one quote: the shocking truth about fielding and the looming end of 50-over cricket.

A curious feeling: win, England, T20, world [reshuffle as appropriate]

It's how all tournaments should be, and not just because England, you know... won [still seems strange to be writing those words]. It was succinct, sharp and progressive on and off the field. T20 is a subtly different to time last year, more understood by players and coaches and driven ever forwards by some quite extraordinary skills.

If you want to obscure brilliance, hide it in plain sight. In 1979, as a young pup, I went the England v West Indies world cup final at Lord's with my dad. We watched from under the clock in the old Compton Stand as West Indies, led by King Viv's 138 and Collis King's brutal, forgotten 86, got the total to 286 in 60 overs. Back then, a score like that looked like the sheer ice cliffs of Everest [England lost by 92 runs].

That's how much the game has changed. It was fitting, as this new hurricane of power settled in to stay, that the man who kick-started the modern one day game, Sanath Jayasuriya, most likely took his leave. The old fella's an MP now, a venerable man, yet - as Joe Frazier's trainer said to Joe after the 14th round in Manila - 'it's over, but no-one will ever forget what you did'. In the golden glow of hindsight, Sri Lanka in '96 lit the way.

So as the game speeds ever on - England start a Test match next week - we should sit for a minute and reflect on the pace of change, demonstrated as much by England's development as by anything else. Here's the player-by-player:

Michael Lumb
137 runs at 19.57, SR 141.23, HS 33
If ever you need an example of stats meaning everything and nothing, look at Lumb. He didn't score heavily, but he was all about intent. A Hayden-sized unit, brutal straight and square, his mindset never altered. He places the correct value on his wicket. Some newspaper writers do not fully understand this yet, but they will... England's tone setter.

Craig Kieswetter
222 runs at 31.71, SR 116.84, HS 63
When KP went home for the birth of little KP, he watched a bit of England's third super-eight game on TV. He noted how still Kieswetter kept his head - the true mark of batsmanship. His hitting is thrilling, and he hits in complimentary areas to Lumb, making bowling plans a nightmare. All he needs to do is learn how to knock a single.

Kevin Pietersen
248 runs at 62.00, SR 137.77, HS 73*
Anyone watching the IPL would have been unsurprised by Pietersen's resurrection. Yes, he's recaptured his game, as he said in every interview. But he now understands absolutely what it is to bat at three in T20 cricket. The position is his. Indelibly, he confronted and destroyed the tournament's two fastest bowlers, Shaun Tait and Dale Steyn - mental disintegration in practice.

Paul Collingwood
61 runs at 10.16, SR 103.38, HS 16
Forget the form, what he gave and gained is priceless. Earned that MBE now, hasn't he...

Eion Morgan
183 runs at 36.60, SR 128.87, HS 55
The freak. Witness the joy of the new. Has ice in his blood too. When people ask if he can play Test cricket or not, just remember that they didn't believe KP could, either. It's peculiarly English to be suspicious of a] talent and b] change. Morgan embodies both.

Luke Wright
90 runs at 30.00, SR 123.28; 1 over, BB 1-5, Econ 5.00
That over is worth a mention - Wright showed nerve, and got Cameron White with a thoughtful wider ball. There's a case for having a full-on batter at six. Wright needs to accept the challenge and become one.

Michael Yardy
20 overs, BB 2-19, Econ 6.80; 8 runs at 4.00, SR 114.28, HS 8*
An inspired selection. Just goes to show that there is something endlessly weird about a bloke who runs up slow and bowls faster than you'd think. It's been working forever.

Tim Bresnan
22 overs, BB 1-20, Econ 7.18; 41 runs at 21.50, SR 136.66, HS 23*
The Michael Lumb of our bowlers - set the tone. He's a million miles from Botham but he has something of Beefy's clarity of approach.

Graeme Swann
22 overs, BB 3-24, Econ 6.54; 9 runs at --, SR 112.50, HS 7*
Well he won't shut up now, will he? Nor should he. There's wonderful skill to what he does, and bravery too. England's outstanding bowler.

Stuart Broad
20.5 overs, BB 2-21, Econ 6.72
Ian Chappell slaughtered Broad on commentary in the final, and you could kind of see his point. Plenty of teams would not tolerate the attitude, whatever he delivers. But the flip side of his moaning is the ballsy nature that had him catching Cameron White after making an arse of himself under a skier a few balls before.

Ryan Sidebottom
21.3 overs, BB 3-23, Econ 7.44
It would be churlish to cavil - Sidders pulled it round - but he still looks England's most collarable bowler. Hard to see him keeping Jimmy Anderson out for much longer, especially in the sub-continent at the 50-over world cup, but Ryan, we'll always have Barbados...

Best story of the tournament: Afghanistan

The OB All-star XI:

1. Mahela Jayawardene [SL]
2. Craig Kieswetter [Eng]
3. KP [Eng]
4. Umar Akmal [Pak]
5. Eion Morgan [Eng]
6. Cameron White [Aus]
7. Daniel Vettori [NZ]
8. Mitchell Johnson [Aus]
9. Graeme Swann [Eng]
10. Stuart Broad [Eng]
11. Dirk Nannes [Aus]

Baby KP: naming rights

KP and Mrs KP are proud parents of a son. Congratulations to them. No name has been announced as yet, so the book is open:

Kevin Pietersen Jnr - 2-1 on

Kaypee - 3-1

Kevin Pietersen II - 4-1

Peter Kevin Pietersen ['PK'] - 5-1

Lalit - 50-1

Pellara - 66-1

Graeme, Jacques, Mooresy - 1,000,000-1

True stories

Terrific Line and Length column over at the Times today from Patrick Kidd. A superlative Boycs anecdote and the answer to the KP question Michael Vaughan is asked the most [yes he did].

Man dismissed by spin bowler in Bangladesh

This morning the British media seized on the extraordinary story of a batsman dismissed several times by spin bowlers in Bangladesh. Some outlets have named the man as Kevin Pietersen, 29, who is believed to live in Chelsea.

'It had to happen eventually and it's the story of the decade,' said one source. 'You'll be reading about it in all the papers'.

'We haven't had a story as good as this one since someone was dismissed by fast bowling in the West Indies. It's incredible. Actually, now I think about it, it might even have been the same man'.

Pull the other one

Two out of form batsmen, two pull shots, one caught, one dropped, one gone for seven, one 137 not out... Well you know - is there a god or isn't there? Depends on which player you ask.

Last night I sat up to see the start of Australia-Pakistan. Katich lumbered in front of one early and got video-replayed out. Ponting came in and hoiked his first short ball to Mohammad Aamer. Didn't have to move. Spilled it like the U17 player he is... Ponting, remarkably, carried on pulling. It took him about two hours to hit one even half-decently.

This morning, Pietersen got in early against South Africa, drilled one down the ground like a man who'd remembered where his stumps were, then hoiked a short ball straight to midwicket. Wayne Parnell caught it like the U19 player so recently was.

Both shots seemed nervously offered, both though came from the machismo of the big player. Ponting played it because he'd told the press he was going to. He was raging against the dying of the light. Pietersen played it because in his head he's the kind of player who plays the pull shot. No surrender.

A coach will tell you to put the cross-bat shots away until your timing comes back and you can read the speed of the pitch. Yet Pietersen and Ponting and the like stand above conventional wisdom. They'll tell you that the pull shot is the symbol of their dominance. They just have to accept the capricious nature of fate from time to time.

KP: opinion divided [again]

There must be something 'wrong' with Kevin Pietersen, because he's not scored a hundred a full six innings into his comeback - that's the media view at least. There were contrasting opinions as to why from Mike Atherton on Sky and Geoffrey Boycott on TMS [paraphrased here].

Athers: 'He's at that stage of his career where he has to decide what he wants from the game. Players get married, kids come along, travelling's different, priorities change and you have to ask yourself what kind of player you want to be remembered as, how much the game means to you, how many runs you want to score.'

Boycott: 'He's a big man, six feet four, and his height means he can get much closer to the pitch of the ball than most players. But he's only taking half a stride. His bat's two and a half feet in front of his pad, he's walking towards the ball, his front leg's stiff and his whole right side is getting turned around. He just needs to play straight'.

No prizes for guessing which one of these men played in the era of the sports psychologist...

'He's a great lad, I like him a lot and I like his batting,' concluded Boycs. 'But he won't listen to anybody. He just says, that's the way I play, take it or leave it'. 

Remind you of anyone, does he Geoffrey?

NB: Not that the great Yorkshireman is blind to the new age. 

Hatchet job

Sometimes the sheer size and frequency of the media leads you to write things you probably don't really want to write, or at least haven't thought about at any length.

Simon Wilde's piece on Kevin Pietersen in the Times is a noteworthy example. 'Even before his layoff, KP no longer looks the player he was,' he asserts. 'His technique looked a mess'.

'Opponents have wised up to him. A ploy of bowling to a fuller length on off-stump was paying dividends'.

Yup, it certainly was. Pietersen is one of those fallible batsmen who can be dismissed early on by a full-length 90mph delivery that swings late and hits the top of off stump, as Jerome Taylor and Fidel Edwards demonstrated. That's a technical flaw shared by er, pretty much everyone who's ever batted.

The truth is, in almost every innings, you have to get out somehow. Like most great batsmen, Pietersen's strength can also be his weakness. No-one without a deadline would suggest he pick apart his technique for that. 

Most egregiously Wilde goes on to makes the claim that 'some think that Pietersen's problems have been compounded by the pursuit of celebrity... They suspect that he has forgotten his main business was scoring runs' [He neglects to name the 'some' who think it, too].

Pietersen can be impugned. His spiky public speaking and the aloofness his talent offers make him a tall poppy. But he is a consummate professional, and is patently dedicated to batting. He has occupied considerably less column inches than Andrew Flintoff and Michael Vaughan in recent months. Wilde's article fails him on all levels.