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Less pressure for 'Aussie' Pietersen

Melbourne Stars recruit lands for Big Bash stint

The sunglasses were immovably perched.

The bling jingled as he swaggered.

But the usual pomp and controversy that has accompanied Kevin Pietersen’s arrival in Australia at the start of a Test match summer was palpably absent today, largely because he did not lob as part of an elongated England touring party here to contest cricket’s most famous trophy.

Instead, Pietersen flew into Melbourne accompanied by little other than a full set of golf clubs and the prospect of turning out for the Monash Tigers next Saturday afternoon at Glen Waverley in the city’s south-eastern suburbs as preparation for his upcoming BBL stint with the Melbourne Stars.

It’s as far flung as it is a far cry from his previous appearance in Australia, in the final Test of last summer’s Ashes whitewash when England’s most dashing batsman of the past decade bagged a pair of single-figure scores and was sent, albeit whistling as the stories go, into cricket exile.

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Kevin Pietersen walks off the SCG in January 2014 for the last time as an England cricketer // Getty Images

In the intervening months, the 34-year-old South African-born batsman has released a tell-everyone autobiography and come to grips with his new life as a globetrotting T20 bat for hire.

Which was why – just hours after a long-haul flight from Dubai and so sleep deprived he dare not remove his shades from his subsequent media call – he took himself straight to the MCG nets for an overdue hit (and more than the occasional miss) on some lively practice pitches.

Despite detailing in his book his fraught relationship with Australian crowds – “I am out of there (Australia) like a bat out of hell, there's just too much abuse” he wrote – Pietersen happily believes this trip will be different.

He won’t be walking through Australian airports wearing headphones to block out journalists’ questions, as was the case last summer, for a start.

“Playing as a fellow Australian for a couple of weeks, I’m hoping it’s better and a little bit easier,” a relaxed if weary Pietersen told cricket.com.au at the MCG this afternoon.

“There’s no rivalry now.

“I’m not here as an Englishman and I’m not here to batter the Aussie bowlers.

“I’m here to have fun, I’m here to hopefully play some good cricket, I’m here to entertain, I’m here to help the (Stars) players.

“There’s not as much pressure.

“In an Ashes series you’ve got the media all over you, you’ve got the weight of expectation of a country, you’ve got that rivalry.

“Here, I’m not going to substitute anything by way of training and in my preparation because I want to do well, I want to play well.

“But I also want to go out and see some things and have some fun.

“And hopefully have a lot less stress than I did as an England player.”

While the fall-out between Pietersen and his former England employer and many teammates reached a high-water mark when his book was released mid-year, he refuses to concede he has played his last Test match in the Three Lions cap.

He cites the example of Pakistan’s Younis Khan who, despite being on the cusp of 40, continues to “make runs for bed and breakfast” against quality opposition at Test level.

Pietersen maintains he has four or five years of international cricket left in him now that his forced hiatus has enabled his damaged knee to mend, and he remains driven to lift his Test runs aggregate (currently stalled on 8,181) to 10,000 and beyond.

And he points to whispered if unsubstantiated rumours of change in the upper echelons of England cricket in coming months as reassurance his fortunes may indeed turn.

But in the meantime, he’s not about to plod along biding time until he receives a call to say he might be welcome back in the fold.

He knows he brings crowds to games, and it’s the crowds – as well as his innate thirst for competition - that bring out the best in him as a batsman and as a showman.

“I find it incredibly boring when people just clap and there’s no atmosphere,” he said.

“When people start getting into it and emotions start to go, it just gets my energy up.

“For me it’s always been the fun part of the game, the part of the game that I’ve really enjoyed – the battle.

“I haven’t played four-day cricket when two men and their dogs come and watch, for a reason.

“When the battle commences that’s when it basically gets my juices flowing.

“The stuff around the boundaries and in and around the ground, it’s amazing and I love it.

“But when the battle starts to grow on the field, that’s when I click.”

Another reason Pietersen was keen to leave England’s drab winter and get to Australian summer, where he will pull on the Stars’ green shirt for their opening game of BBL|04 at Adelaide Oval on December 18, was to pay his respects to the late Australian Test batsman Phillip Hughes.

Pietersen began his media conference by airing his profound sadness at Hughes’s death, but also to praise Australia’s cricket community, its people and even its media – with whom he has been known to engage in a few running battles – for the dignified manner in which they have handled the tragedy.

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Pietersen was hampered with a knee injury throughout the 2013-14 Commonwealth Bank Ashes series // Getty Images

What it has brought home, to a man who admits he thrives on the battle he waged against fast bowlers such as Mitchell Johnson who Pietersen revealed in his book put fear into the England dressing room during last year’s Ashes, was the courage needed to bat against a cricket ball.

Particularly on bouncy pitches such as those he will doubtless find during his BBL stint in Australia.

“It is sometimes scary business for tailenders, facing someone as fast as that,” he said when recounting the influence Johnson wielded on last summer’s five-nil Ashes result.

“Some of the spells that he bowled to guys like (Stuart) Broad and to Jimmy (Anderson) and to the guys who can’t defend themselves as well as we (specialist batsmen) can defend ourselves, it is frightening.

“So after what has happened in the last couple of weeks I think that people will respect batters and understand the fear of that attack when a guy starts to bowl short at players.

“(But) I love that challenge, I absolutely loved that.

“I had one knee in the Ashes last year.

“I would have loved to have two knees playing through it, so I would have loved that even more.”