Cricket’s ‘golden age’
You have to hand it to Kevin Pietersen. He’s certainly got chutzpah — or should that be a death wish? Just when you might think he’d be happy, having finally won the battle to take part in the Indian Premier League, he’s gone and started another fight, but this time it was one he was going to lose.
There are two ways of viewing his bloody and shambolic feud with Peter Moores, the England coach (sorry, make that the former England coach), that’s ended with all the main players lying dead, centre stage. One is that Pietersen’s a natural born winner, a man who will stop at nothing in taking his side to victory, and that with the Ashes coming down the track, he just wanted what’s best. But when it comes to causing trouble, KP’s got a long charge sheet. First he walked out on South Africa, blaming the racial quota system. Then, just as Nottinghamshire were relegated, he said he wanted out, grumbling about pretty much everything. He’s always been as petulant as he is talented. So is that same streak the real reason why he was trying to sack his own boss? Was KP smarting from letting India off the hook in that fourth innings, and using Moores as a scapegoat? Did he just want his old mucker Graham Ford, who’s known KP since his Natal days and is now at Kent, in the job?
And the rumblings coming out of what appears to be a faction-ridden English dressing-room indicate that Pietersen didn’t have blanket support, and that Michael Vaughan, who Pietersen wanted with him in the West Indies, has been doing a bit of unsavoury plotting behind the arras. Whatever, it is a massive own goal by Pietersen, and a story with miles to unravel. But anyone fancy a bet: England under their new captain to lose the Ashes this summer, but Pietersen to average about 130?
Whatever the truth, let’s hope it doesn’t detract from the battles on the pitch. Cricket is heading into a golden age — not least for intrigue now, as well — and the year ahead looks almost impossibly thrilling. As 2008 drew to a close, it looked for all the world like India was the new undisputed cricket superpower, having seen off Australia in style. But now that South Africa’s multicultural all-stars of Amla, Duminy, Ntini & co (what’s that you were saying about the injustice of racial quotas, KP?) have also taken up the world’s new favourite hobby of Aussie-tonking, the battle to be the best is not so clear-cut. Just to script the drama all the more perfectly, Australia have the immediate right of reply, as they head to South Africa for a Test series starting 26 February. Sri Lanka are right up there with India and South Africa, too. Fingers crossed their tour of Pakistan goes ahead — Test cricket will be all the richer with Pakistan back in the game.
And the records are tumbling. Remember when 250 was an almost unassailable fourth-innings total? That doesn’t apply when Sehwag can hit 83 off 68 balls on day four, as he did against England in Chennai. And no game is dead when the new boys Duminy (batting down at six) and Steyn (who’d just taken five wickets, and was batting at 10) can put on a partnership of 180 against the Aussies.
Then there’s the small matter of an Ashes series. Nobody should write off the Aussies just yet. They may no longer be invincible, but who’d bet against them bouncing back to be the world’s best once again by the year’s end, with Siddle, Johnson and who knows which other young guns leaving Pietersen possibly quite glad he threw his toys out of the pram?
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