Kevin Pietersen

We don’t hate Kevin Pietersen

There you go. We’ve nailed our colours to the mast and those assorted greys and beiges that you can see fluttering in the breeze indicate our lack of hatred for Kevin Peter Pietersen (yes, that’s his real middle name).

More than that, we don’t quite get why so many people do hate him. He plays for England, averages 50, scores his runs with a clomping glee and is one of the few batsmen in the world who can explode from being smothered by the bowlers and instead make them run scared. He’s amazing.

Maybe it’s the caricature of him as an arrogant mercenary who’s only interested in personal glory. That’s a simplistic depiction.

The treachery of his switch of allegiance goes hand in hand with the iron-willed and successful pursuit of his ambitions; the arrogance is just his toeing the line of supreme, but largely justified, self confidence; and the attention-seeking switch hitting is just a pragmatic way of hitting gaps in the field. When the ball goes for four, the end justifies the means.

We’ve every reason to believe he’ll be a decent England captain. Maybe even a great one. He has little experience, but his track record of achieving what he sets out to do is staggering.

He was a number eight in South African domestic cricket. He came to England, averaged 50, hit four hundreds in four innings on an England A tour to India, then hit three hundreds in five one-day innings against the country of his birth almost immediately after being promoted to the one-day side. If he thinks he can make England successful, it’s worth giving him a go.

We thought that Pietersen should have been made captain when the one-day job was up for grabs. He’s a thinking batsman who comes up with some unconventional solutions. Hopefully he’ll adopt a similar approach with his captaincy.

Kevin Pietersen likes an occasion

That was as good as a certainty, wasn’t it?

Kevin Pietersen likes a big match. He must be driven by stomach butterflies or something. We’re not quite sure how that would work, because even our rudimentary scientific knowledge tells us that there aren’t actually butterflies in there.

He went out to bat in the middle of England losing three wickets in as many overs. He was playing a Test against the country of his birth for the first time. He scores a remorseless hundred.

We particularly like the way he’s got no time at all for the bowling of Paul Harris. Yes, it’s tactical, but Pietersen tries to hit him out of the attack with a malicious glee.

Ian Bell did himself no end of good today as well. We wonder whether he read about Graham Thorpe this morning, because he adopted that very approach: 15 minutes of heart-in-mouth, counter-punching near-calamity leading to easy accumulation.

England v South Africa first Test at Lord’s, day one
England 309-3 (Kevin Pietersen 104 not out, Ian Bell 75 not out, Alastair Cook 60)

Kevin Pietersen to captain England

Paul Collingwood’s been banned for four matches for England’s slow over rate and Kevin Pietersen‘s picked up the reigns to the haggard, lifeless horse that is the England one-day side. We’re not unhappy about this. We’ve said before that we think Kevin Pietersen would make a half-decent captain.

KP said he was ‘humbled’ by this ‘ultimate honour’.

This is clearly bollocks. KP’s never been humbled by anything in his life, because he’s got that unusual belief that he’s better than everyone else. Generally speaking this is an insanely irritating characteristic in a person, but it’s a pretty handy attribute for elite sportsmen.

The very best cricketers have been the ones who can defy reason and bend a match to their will: Botham, Richards, Warne. You can’t triumph against the odds without that faintly delirious, essentially unjustified belief in yourself. Pietersen isn’t remotely close to this company, but we’re not going to criticise him for having that mentality. If nobody thought like that, cricket would be all the more banal and predictable.

We’re not saying that Pietersen’s the best batsman in the world, because he isn’t. He is however an extremely good cricketer and a big part of his cricketing make-up is that self-assurance. That and mascara.

So when he pretends that he’s humble, we don’t mind. He knows that he’s supposed to be like that to be more likeable. However, we don’t for one minute want him to actually feel that way for real. So a blatant lie about being ‘humbled’ is the best he can do in our eyes.

Kevin Pietersen’s ‘new shot’

Kevin Pietersen said: “That is a new shot, played today” after twice reversing his stance and whopping Scott Styris for six. No it isn’t. It’s batting left-handed. People have been batting left-handed for a while now.

It’s a new approach though, even if it’s not a new shot. Is it unfair? Batting wrong-handed should be anything but an advantage if you take field placings out of consideration.

One of the best things we’ve heard said about it came from Nasser Hussain, who basically advocated Bodyline. If the batsman reverses his stance and you find yourself with three leg slips and a leg gully all of a sudden, then bowl to that field.

Not that one-day cricket often features three slips and a gully, but that’s one-day cricket. It’s about hitting boundaries, not taking wickets. Would a batsman be so keen to ‘switch hit’ in a Test? The hook shot’s tricky enough when you play it the usual way round.

Kevin Pietersen gets sledged by a worm

“What did you say, you little bastard?”

KP suffered a dislocated little finger and severe bruising to his fist shortly after this picture was taken.

Kevin Pietersen out waving slightly fatiguely

That’s what Simon Hughes said on Channel 5′s highlights programme, so that’s what happened.

It’s probably wrong to mock commentators’ slips of the tongue when you yourself forget 98 percent of your vocabulary whenever you have to talk in front of more than one person, or to a stranger, or on the phone, or in public, or when you’re tired.

Kevin Pietersen managed to squeeze in a hundred before he slightly fatiguely waved at a wide one. He was at the crease when England were 86-5 and while there are any number of articles stating just how many matches it’s been since England scored 400 plus in their first innings, we’re not sure this was ever going to be the match where they put that right.

They say it’s the new stand that’s helping the swing, but the ball’s been swinging at Trent Bridge for ages. We were there in 2005 on the day that Matthew Hoggard and Simon Jones, England’s biggest swingers (in a good way), reduced Australia to 58-4.

So Kevin Pietersen’s hundred might prove pretty handy. We’ll have to wait and see how New Zealand’s innings goes.

England v New Zealand, third Test at Trent Bridge
England 273-7 (Kevin Pietersen 115, Tim Ambrose 67, Iain O’Brien 4-61, Kyle Mills 3-58)

Less tweediness from Strauss’s team mates

Remember how Andrew Strauss was going to GET THE JOB DONE? Ceci sent more pictures, saying:

“Squire Hoggard and the chav Vaughan. KP however will always be an alien life form to me. I’d like to say the rough edges are there as an ironic statement, but of course I would be a big fat liar.”

This one we can take, even if the dog on the left is a bit… visible.

This is harder to take. Don’t look at the weirdly taut groin, whatever you do.

And this one – we don’t know what to say about this one.

You people know that graphic designers read this site, don’t you? Imagine how they feel being so comprehensively outshone.

Bad decisions don’t decide a Test

England will be pretty disappointed to have only made 351 and they’ll point to a couple of rough decisions as being one cause, but if they’re a serious Test side, they should forget about them. It’s not like they’re going to get overturned after the match. Don’t dwell on it.

The most contentious was the dismissal of Kevin Pietersen. Pietersen edged a ball from Chaminda Vaas to Chamara Silva in the slips. Silva went to take the ball to his left, the ball bounced out of his grasp, he managed to scoop it up a second time and succeeded in directing it to Kumar Sangakkara at first slip, who held onto it. It would have been quite neat if it weren’t for the fact that the ball appeared to have been grounded as Silva went for it initially.

So everyone’s calling for ‘the technology’ to be used in these decisions – the umpires chose not to refer it.

However, from England’s point of view, as regards this Test match, the main problem was that Kevin Pietersen edged a ball to second slip. As a batsman, if you edge the ball to second slip, there’s a fair chance you’re going to be out.

We do feel a bit sorry for Pietersen though. Not because of the decision, but because of the fact that he was encouraged to stay out on the field by his teammates. This meant he was standing around like a lost child until it became apparent that actually, yes, he was out.

This was rather unbecoming for a batsman who’s generally very dignified when given out. He tends to tuck his bat under his arm and stride off displaying minimal emotion. It’s quite admirable.

Yes, we really did describe Kevin Pietersen as ‘dignified’.

Sri Lanka v England, second Test at Columbo – day one
England 258-5 (Michael Vaughan 87, Alastair Cook 81)

Kevin Pietersen shows the Aussies how it’s done

‘It’ being ‘scoring runs against Zimbabwe’.

Despite forgetting that he was right-handed for much of his innings, everyone’s most/least favourite bludgeoner hit 79 off 37 balls after England had lost a few early wickets.

England also won by quite a margin, opening up the possibility that they could knock Australia out by not losing too badly to them later today. How very English.

Kevin Pietersen with some bird on his arm

Ho ho ho. It’s an actual bird. We weren’t really referring to a woman as a bird because that would be demeaning. We were just alluding to that usage – which is of course perfectly acceptable.

Worst post ever. Good job there’s absolutely no chance of our ever making this exact same joke a second time.