Complex KP leaves legacy of greatness

As much as he happily provoked and polarised throughout his lengthy stay as one of cricket's most talked-about figures, Kevin Pietersen will walk away from the game with a recurring theme running through this week's inevitable outpouring of testimonials: greatness.

Of course, together with the runs and the records, comes no small amount of controversy; his exile from England's national team following the 2013-14 Ashes was debated for years (often prodded along by Pietersen himself), while the relationship between he and his former captain Andrew Strauss during their playing time together was latterly engulfed in scandal. Even before his life collided with fame, he courted drama, leaving behind South African cricket in protest at the racial quota system.

With the passage of time however, it is likely that Pietersen's brilliance as a batsman will shine brightest, in the same way the indiscretions of Ian Botham or Shane Warne have faded when held up against the light of their iconic deeds with bat or ball.

In any conditions, in any format, Pietersen was a batting genius. He pulled off his gung-ho, flamboyant approach to the craft with a captivating combination of orthodox stroke play and his own inventions, and used his height and power to become one of his generation's most commanding presences at the crease.

By a quirk of the calendar, the first 11 internationals he played were all in his native Africa, and by the time he returned to England ahead of the 2005 Ashes, he already had three ODI hundreds to his name.

But he also had a skunk hairdo, and with his runs coming on a faraway continent in the middle of football season, the skepticism surrounding his potential Ashes inclusion was palpable; how would this overnight one-day wonder handle an all-conquering Australian bowling attack boasting Warne, McGrath, Gillespie and Lee?

Much of the Pietersen legend was created in the ensuing three months, and while his reputation off the field has vacillated considerably across more than a decade since, his claims to greatness never have.

That his breathtaking, counter-attacking, generation-defining 158 against Australia in '05 isn't clear-cut as his magnum opus gives a clue as to just what a batting force Pietersen was in his pomp. Many consider his jaw-dropping 186 against India in Mumbai in 2012, made from just 233 balls, to be his finest hand. Those two innings, played more than seven years apart, share a commonality in that they were crucial in England landing breakthrough series wins; yes, Pietersen was a man for the big occasion, his country's most consistent match-winner since Botham.

The numbers too, support his claim to greatness, as invariably they must in cricket.

Throughout his time in the Test arena (between July 2005 and January 2014) no-one scored more than his 8,181 runs. In ODIs and T20Is, the same can be said among Englishmen.

In those shorter formats, for which his deeds will rightly be remembered as secondary to his Test feats, Pietersen was not only the best of his countrymen throughout his generation; he was a trailblazer for the brand of batting that currently has England highly fancied to claim their first World Cup crown next year.

In T20 cricket, he also found a way to reinvent himself in the final years of his career, both as a player and a personality. England Cricket's loss was the T20 domestic scene's gain the world over, as Pietersen immersed himself in the format's gun-for-hire culture and proved one of its most successful and sought-after exponents.

Routinely reviled in Australia through his international career, his four-year spell with Melbourne Stars in the Big Bash won him an army of supporters, and more than a few begrudging admirers. Even his long-running 'feud' with the city of Brisbane was always more spirited than sinister.

But Test cricket, while increasingly under threat from its own spawn, remains the lens through which the greatest players are judged. In the modern era, there are few better credentialed than Greg Chappell to do the judging, and the former Test captain and legendary batting savant recently named his finest 40 Ashes players of the past 40 years for cricket.com.au.

Coming in at No.13, the highest of any England batsman, was Pietersen.

"I put Kevin Pietersen in a very high echelon of batsmen – as good as any England batsman I've seen, and his record will stand alongside England's best-ever batsmen," Chappell wrote.

"To make the runs he did in that 2005 Ashes – his first-ever Test series – against the quality of bowlers he was up against, you've got to have more than just ability; you need self-belief and real commitment.

"'KP' had those things from the outset of his career. He was a bit like Matthew Hayden in that he was an imposing figure who intimidated the opposition.

"He was strong off front foot and back, preferred to drive and was technically good everywhere. He scored runs on both sides of the wicket and scored them at a good clip.

"His brashness made him a target but he revelled in that; it fired him up and made him more acutely aware of the contest and the need to do well."

Chappell touches on a couple of traits that forever rode pillion passenger in the Pietersen adventure: brashness and competitiveness.

For the 37-year-old, who has given the game away because the competitive fires have finally stopped burning, the two went hand in hand. It's impossible to imagine a humble, laissez-faire Pietersen going toe-to-toe with Warne and McGrath in the heat of the Ashes cauldron.

And the statistics attest to the fact that no-one succeeded against Warne and McGrath like Pietersen; of the 23 players who scored more than 500 runs against Australian teams featuring the legendary duo, Pietersen's average of 57.42 is head and shoulders above his peers (Brian Lara is next best at 51.03).

"His personality probably overrode his cricket somewhat," Chappell observed. "It was part of what made him the player he was but it also distracted people from how good he was.

"Best of all, he was a match-winner – he changed games regularly."

As he walks away from the game, he does so with the vow of establishing an even greater legacy than that which he leaves in cricket.

"Lots asking what I'm going to do next," he wrote on Twitter on Saturday. "I'm going to take the same passion & hard work into trying to save rhinos from extinction."

The world of animal conservation probably isn't ready for Kevin Peter Pietersen, but when you factor in his reputation for bloody single-mindedness and his rare ability to steal the headlines, there may be few better faces to commit to the cause.