The retirement of Kevin Pietersen has already resulted in a spate of articles in newspapers around the cricketing world, featuring his highs and his lows.
He was the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde of cricket. When at his best he was a supreme batsman, one of the most eye-catching I have seen.
But often he was his own worst enemy, his ego outweighing his talent. A team person he was not as he seemed to have a polarising effect.
He was black and white, shades of grey he had none. Many admire his honesty, others criticise his apparent arrogance and lack of modesty.
Former Australian wicket-keeper Adam Gilchrist opined that Kevin had suffered the common fate of the superstar who had a persona bigger than the game, officials eventually tiring of the disruptions wrought by the match-winner.
But others, former England stalwarts Alec Stewart and Michael Vaughan, questioned the inability of administrators to handle the brilliant the larger-than-life super star.
According to Gilly, “He is a guy who believes in his own ability as much as anyone I’ve ever come across and he outwardly expresses that unashamedly.”
“That does divide opinion. Some people think that’s too brash and too arrogant and it’s not the way you go about being in a team sport.
“For me it’s a personality better suited to an individual sport, (but) there is a lot of those qualities and traits required in cricket.
“Kevin’s been an interesting proposition for team management and captains to get on top of. He had a crack at the captaincy himself and that led to an ego clash with the coach at the time. So he’s [Kevin’s] quite a complex character that England has obviously had enough of.”
Kevin Pietersen’s batting figures were impressive but not outstanding as he failed to average over 50 in any form of the game.
In 104 Tests he scored 8181 runs at 47.28 with 23 centuries, in 136 ODIs he notched 4440 at 40.73 with nine hundreds, in 37 T20s he hit 1176 at 37.93 (with a strike rate of 141.51) but no tons and in 213 first-class matches he scored 16053 runs at 48.79 with 49 centuries.
England needed Pietersen at his glorious best to lift them from their horrible slump down under but he, along with others, let his country down.
His form was slipping and he reached perhaps his nadir in the recent Ashes series where he managed only 294 runs at a poor average of 29.40 with a highest score of 71 in the MCG Test.
Although I have admired and criticised the controversial Kevin from a distance I did not get a chance to interview him.
The closest I got to him was during the first day of the Sydney Test on January 3. I was sitting in the second row of the Members Stand and the tall Pietersen was fielding at long leg boundary, almost at a shake-hand level from me.
He never looked back or signed autographs, which is fair enough.
But when three or four spectators started chanting, “There can be only one Kerry Packer”, the other KP (Kevin Pietersen on the boundary line) got angry, gesticulating with fingers.
He could have smiled at this harmless chanting but he was obviously annoyed.
A few minutes later security men arrived on the scene and told those spectators to stop chanting. Thee chanters stated that they meant no harm as they had not used any abusive words. It was just a catchy tune.
It was nothing like the way Richard Hadlee and others have been heckled in the past. There was no heckling against Pietersen by those chanters.
The security men told them that Mr Pietersen had complained against this chanting.
I can vouchsafe that there was no booing or bad-mouthing by those “musical” spectators.
Pietersen had got angry when he should have smiled or sang the catchy tune at the end of the over.
I pity those who have no sense of humour. Sorry, Kevin.
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