Chris Waters: Losing England’s captaincy put Pietersen off path to greatness

“If Kevin improves his focus and concentration at the crease he can be up there with the top three cricketers who have ever played the game. That is a huge statement, but he is that good.

“He can beat Graham Gooch’s record as England’s leading run-scorer, that’s for sure.

“He can beat Sachin Tendulkar’s record for the most Test hundreds.

“On faster wickets he can even beat Brian Lara’s record for the highest individual score in Test cricket. Kevin is capable of scoring 500 runs in a Test innings.”

Those words, written by former Nottinghamshire and South Africa captain Clive Rice, emphasise the extent of Pietersen’s talent.

Rice, who brought Pietersen to England from his native South Africa, made his comments in a foreword to a 2009 biography of Pietersen by Wayne Veysey entitled KP Cricket Genius?

The question mark was apposite, for the jury is still out on whether Pietersen is a genius as opposed to just a great player.

His statistics would suggest he is just a great player, and yet the suspicion remains he could be so much more.

When Pietersen hobbled out of the World Cup last week, another chance went by to justify Rice’s prophesy.

The one-day stage may be no barometer of greatness, but the World Cup is still a platform on which great players are expected to demonstrate their talents.

In four innings before a hernia problem curtailed his participation in the tournament, Pietersen scored 39, 31, 59 and 2.

Although operating as a makeshift opener and not fully-fit, those returns were disappointingly solid rather than dazzlingly spectacular.

Indeed, as he approaches his 31st birthday, Pietersen’s place in the pantheon is far from assured.

To be one of the top three cricketers to have played the game, Pietersen will have to go some during the next few years.

At present, his Test average is 48.42, his one-day international average 40.98, while his first-class average has dropped below 50.

Those figures do not even put him in the top 100 players to have played the game, never mind among cricket’s Holy Trinity.

There is no greater admirer of Pietersen’s ability than myself, having been privileged to cover his first three seasons at Nottinghamshire between 2001 and 2003.

Like Rice, I also predicted a path to greatness, but it has not quite worked out like that for the man from Pietermaritzburg.

The statistics show Pietersen has not yet fulfilled the promise of his early days, nor come close to breaking every record in the book, as he threatened to do.

In fact, unless there is a profusion of sizeable Test scores sooner rather than later, he is destined to be remembered as a very good player as opposed to a genuinely great one.

Of course, some might ask: are we being fair?

Are we perhaps expecting too much of Pietersen?

But, if you can bat like he can, the sky is the limit.

After that, it is on to the stratosphere.

In the same book foreword, Rice made a telling point, saying: “Kevin’s downfall is often over-exuberance.

“I think he can go where no batsman has gone before if he can improve his concentration and learn to hit a six followed by a single rather than three sixes in an over, or one to bring up a century.

“He does occasionally play some stupid shots at that stage of his innings, like when he got out for 97 against the West Indies in February 2009 by slogging it straight up in the air.

“Those stupid mistakes are not made between 0 and 10. They are made because of his confidence at 90.”

Unfortunately, Pietersen has never quite lost his propensity for playing stupid shots.

It is almost as much of a signature as the flamingo or switch-hit, both of which he has elevated to art form.

For just as confidence is his greatest strength, so it is his biggest weakness.

Perhaps Pietersen would not be Pietersen if that were not so.

When history looks back on his career, as it will before long, it will surely pinpoint events during the winter of 2008-09 as the moment Pietersen’s progress was fatally stalled.

His titanic fall-out with former England coach Peter Moores, which led to him losing the captaincy, undoubtedly had a profound effect.

Since then, Pietersen has scored 1,627 runs in 26 Tests at 43.97 – figures that fall short of unqualified greatness.

He has managed only two hundreds during that time and been reduced to the level of humble mortal.

Moreover, the Moores row tangibly affected his confidence – hitherto unshakeable – and demotivated him as well.

It was not that Pietersen could not be bothered anymore; simply that he was no longer inspired as he had been in the past.

As one of his former coaches told me, the best thing England could have done was make Pietersen captain, but perhaps the worst thing they could have done was take the captaincy off him.

There have been suggestions his appetite for 50-over cricket has gone, concerns over his celebrity lifestyle, and a general sense that the hunger has diminished.

Pietersen is the sort of player who needs to feel loved, but he suddenly felt expendable after he was sacked as captain.

Rice’s prediction that Pietersen could score 500 in a Test innings has not come true – nor is it likely to.

He simply does not have the mentality of a Lara, who had the determination to go on and make mountainous scores.

When Rice said, “Kevin Pietersen has barely scratched the surface of his cricketing potential”, he was right.

But one wonders whether he will ever scratch that surface.

NO PAIN, NO GAIN FOR INJURED KP

ON the subject of Kevin Pietersen, his withdrawal from the World Cup did not best please Andy Flower.

The England head coach was less than enamoured that Pietersen did not play through the pain barrier after medical advice going into the tournament was that his hernia injury could be comfortably managed.

Pietersen’s attitude to the pain barrier appears to have been in stark contrast to that of former England captain Michael Atherton, who revealed in his newspaper column this week the extent to which painkillers kept him on the field.

At the age of 22, Atherton was diagnosed with an inflammatory back condition that threatened his career as a professional cricketer.

He began taking NSAIDs – a non-steroid anti-inflammatory drug.

“After years of abuse, I got to the stage where I had no tolerance for Voltarol and would bleed immediately after taking one,” wrote Atherton.

“ When I stopped playing, and therefore had no easy access to the drug, I went to my doctor, who refused to prescribe me any more, so horrified was he with the dosage I had been taking.”

Atherton’s commitment is an example to all.