Pietersen ready to take on new role?

On what is likely to be the day of his first innings on England's tour of Sri Lanka at the Premadasa stadium, Kevin Pietersen will hopefully be settling into the same mind-set he had found during the limited overs matches at the end of the last tour against Pakistan in the UAE. 

During the first five matches of the tour he mustered just one hundred and seven runs in eight attempts. Runs were grabbed, poked and clawed into his grasp via obstacles of his own making -  playing a long way in front of the pad against the spinners and the trade-mark drag from outside off against whoever happened to be delivering from the other end. It was all rather ugly stuff from a man who, lest we forget, accumulated more runs in his first twenty-five tests than any player save Don Bradman and who matched Viv Richards' record of racing to a thousand one-day runs in just 21 attempts.  

In the third one-day match in Dubai, Pietersen's fortunes changed as abruptly as to suggest someone had taken the blindfold off. His 111* was a first one-day hundred in three years and was fashioned in the manner of the experienced pro in his prime years i.e. the sort of performer KP has failed to be in recent times. For the rest of the tour his batting was of the highest order. Each innings was built rather than thrown together. In short, the swagger was back.

More significantly, his mentality seemed to have taken a great step forward. On numerous occasions the South African born player has thrown away his wicket when application has been order of the day, when match situations were finely poised and lower order players could really do with another hour or so in the hutch. 'That's just the way I play' and similarly dismissive comments make a mockery of his own protestations that he will in time become a legend, one of the greats of the game. 


The renaissance of his one-day success seemed to be built on a more mature outlook, one which helped the man at the other end and seemed to have a direct link to the brains trust of Andy Flower et al in the dressing room. 


England fans will be hoping that the former captain has finally concluded that at thirty-one years of age, he needs to apply himself in all forms of the game in order to gain entry into the ranks of the greats. Should he pass the next examination against the spinning ball on sub-continental pitches, KP may have one foot in the illustrious door he seems to have set his sights on.