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Something is seriously messing with Kevin Pietersen’s brain. If the sweep he played to get out to Nathan Hauritz in the first innings is not the worst shot ever played by a major batsman in an Ashes Test, it will certainly make the final.
He reached a couple of feet outside off-stump and dinked it on to his helmet and into the hands of short leg.
English comedian Frank Skinner described the shot as “looking like a man trying to get a coin from under the fridge.”
At least he played a shot.
His dismissal by Ben Hilfenhaus in the second innings, while not quite as loopy, raised further doubts about his state of mind.
Hilfenhaus delivered a straight ball aimed – as all fast bowlers in short pants are taught – to hit the top of off stump.
Which is exactly what it did.
It did not swing. It did not cut. It did not deviate in any way. It was wholly unremarkable.
Yet Pietersen got himself in such a muddle that his legs went sideways and his bat got stuck at a 45-degree angle with nowhere to go.
Hilfenhaus could scarcely believe his eyes as the off stump was plucked clean out of the ground.
The wicket plunged England from having some hope of saving the match to certain defeat, weather permitting.
It was an extraordinary error of judgment by the man whose power and swagger the Australians fear – more so, even, than Freddie Flintoff.
KP was the man who denied them an Ashes-saving victory at The Oval four years ago with a monumental 158 on the final day of his debut series.
They rate him as the best non-Australian batsman in world cricket.
Something has got into his head.
By all accounts he sparked a confrontation with mild-mannered Mitchell Johnson when he struck a ball towards the Australians while the teams were warming up at the ground before the final day’s play began.
Johnson had to be subdued by 12th man Stuart Clark.
In the lead-up to the Test, Pietersen had tried to play things cool by saying, in effect, that he would treat this as just another cricket series.
“If you try and make it out as something bigger than it is, you can hurt yourself and get into a bit of a tizzy, and add too much pressure to yourself,” he said.
“There is no great expectation on me.”
After this, there might not be.
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