The Ego's landing has the ageing Aussies in a flap

14 April 2012

Australia's dab-hand sledgers have taken to calling Kevin Pietersen "The Ego". Around the stumps here in Adelaide they ask each other caustically: "What's The Ego going to do next?"

Answer: attack, amaze, antagonise and sometimes even appal, as he did with a suicidal pull-shot off the penultimate ball of the first day's play.

Cricket's first pop star survived that indiscretion, but only because Glenn McGrath seemed to age 40 years as he scuttled back from mid-on to bungle the catch. Taking liberties with his wicket must seem natural to a man whose fiancee is in the band Liberty X.

Pietersen will never be loved in these parts but he is well on the way to being feared, which, as Machiavelli observed, is preferable for anyone with ambitions to rule the world.

In an interview at his London flat recently he told me he was learning to play something called "situational cricket". From this Ashes series we discover what he meant.

If someone bowls a ball at him, he creates a "situation" for him by trying to belt it into the car park. In theory, England's most exciting batsman is trying to temper his swashbuckling ways to take greater care of his wicket. Honest, M'lud.

But throw the ball at his head, call him a narcissist or print match-day headlines declaring "Pietersen caught in racist storm" and you might as well poke a hive with a stick and then pull faces at the bees as they swarm out.

Before he left London for this Ashes rematch he said: "I can't wait. I love Australia. Great country. Great people." On the evidence so far the feeling is less than mutual.

Australians like a plucky Pom but they are intimidated by what they see as arrogance. Not that Pietersen is Douglas Jardine with tattoos. Part of what makes him so exotic is that he brings an un-English dose of high-risk endeavour to a team schooled on Duncan Fletcher's cunning and science.

The great figures in sport change the chemistry of games. They are the magnets, and the crowd are their iron filings. Jonah Lomu in his prime had the aura to turn rugby matches into one-man shows. Shane Warne has it with a ball.

All live sport is unscripted, but when the special players take the stage there is the sense that you have been conscripted into their movie.

Pietersen remains capable of infuriating team-mates, Wisden-clutching purists and even his family, who never imagined that the boy they sent to England to escape the South African quota system would end up wearing £100,000 worth of jewellery and a skunk on his head, not to mention the Beckhamesque ubiquity of his personal appearances, which prompted Andrew Flintoff to observe that he would "turn up to the opening of an envelope".

Since those early "Hi-I'm-Kevin" days he has adopted the crew cut of the urban warrior, vacated the love-romp sections of the Sunday newspapers and set aside his on-field friendship with Shane Warne in favour of shredding his Hampshire team-mate's career.

In modern sport these days you would have to travel a long way to beat Warne v Pietersen: the master against the student, two non-conformist attention-seekers vying for supremacy as a sub-plot to cricket's oldest rivalry.

When the world's greatest bowler aimed a leg-break at England's artist-bully for the first time in this match, the ball spun towards the Sir Donald Bradman stand and brought all the great Ashes confrontations echoing down the years. A charge of anticipation shot through the stands, which were rammed with the biggest Test match crowd Adelaide has seen since 1976.

Warne tried to persuade us that their Brisbane contretemps was all settled by a post-match beer (lager alert to disapproving Aussie legends - Ricky Ponting's men are socialising again with the hated Poms!)

But it's plain they crossed a line with Pietersen's 'f***wit' retort. Their friendship ceased to be a mutual admiration society. The apprentice was outgrowing his role as Shane's little project.

Cut to Adelaide, and Pietersen swipes Warne for a six as well as two successive fours, brutally dispatched as the England No 5 rocked back on his heels, and found the boundary from the sweet spot on his willow.

In case you were wondering about the "racist storm" headline, it relates to his constant verbal assaults on the South African cricketing establishment, whom he accuses of driving him out by positively discriminating against young white players. South Africa's board now want Pietersen punished for remarks he made in a magazine interview.

The precise reasons for his dash to London are disputed, but what nobody doubts is that he has transformed England's middle order into a brazen attacking force. The contrast between Paul Collingwood's gallant nudging and nurdling and Pietersen's violent poetry is a book in itself.

Both have their uses, but if you value the imagination then Pietersen's ingenuity and audacity are for you. Bristling with a film star's self-regard, "KP" touched down in this hostile land knowing that success in the five Ashes venues would put the world on his string.

Like Beckham, he set out to be famous, to find the light - and now he is trying to show us that his immortal innings of 158 from 187 balls at The Oval last summer, which featured an Ashes record seven sixes, was only the start.

"The Ego" has landed, spreading fear among the creaking elders of Ponting's team. "What will he do next?" is a question for our age, not just Aussie sledgers.

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