Captain Kev makes his mark
2008-08-07 21:11
Comment: Rob Houwing
Cape Town - So, do we attribute England's first-day excellence at The Oval to the impact of their new captain Kevin Pietersen?
The answer is both an unavoidable yes and a tempering no.
In 55 minutes of middle-session mayhem, after all, it certainly wasn't KP doing the tangible, actual damage as South Africa tumbled inexplicably from a rosy 103/1 to wretched 132/6, which really defined the home team's ominous general superiority at stumps.
That honour went to pace bowlers Steve Harmison, who sparked the rot, and James Anderson, who gleefully furthered it, in a blistering onslaught from both ends.
Anderson, particularly, got the ball swinging late and significantly both ways: you always felt that at some stage in the series, England's bowlers would eventually hit a purple patch.
So thank goodness, then, the horse had already bolted and that England's rise from the pit was only coming after the proverbial funeral service!
Yes, imagine if Graeme Smith hadn't scored his match-winning 154 not out at Edgbaston and the summer was instead poised at 1-1: there would have been some very, very cold sweats in the Proteas' dressing room after the way the Friday pendulum went.
Historical penchant
Just think: we'd have upped our angst about Jacques Kallis's personal series - which is now not a long way off abject from a batting point of view; are the old guy's eyes finally going - and resurrected our general curses about the Proteas' historical penchant for filling their run-scoring boots early in England and then inexplicably "emptying" them again just at the business end of the summer.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves, or forget which way the greater cookie has crumbled. The exercise at The Oval, from an English perspective, is all about heralding new dawns after disaster - something not unfamiliar in that nation's topsy-turvy sporting annals - and in that respect Pietersen got through his first day at the head of the pack rather swimmingly.
First positive step for the good ship at KP's command was probably, perversely, losing the toss. Graeme Smith would have looked at the cloud cover and thought "bowl" but then contemplated Oval heritage and thought "bat" for the desired juggernaut total that tends to come the way of the side batting first at the London venue.
Celebratory hangovers
But what the heck: this was a dead-rubber affair and Smith took the braver option. Getting to 100 with only one man in the hut seemed to represent the right stuff but then the Proteas' celebratory hangovers returned for a rather spectacular visit.
So the dead-rubber matter simply has to be taken into consideration when assessing Pietersen's all-purrs baptism.
That said, he rotated his bowlers well, seemed to get his charges a bit more "amped" than had been the case in recent Michael Vaughan matches, and let's not forget, too, that England's rather more "attacking" line-up with five specialist bowlers was due in no small part to his pre-game insistence.
Commentator David Lloyd made the point that in the first hour or so, KP's eager-beaver clapping and cajoling reminded him a little of the greenhorn GC Smith of 2003.
Yet Pietersen quickly seemed to realise that this route alone is not the full recipe to successful captaincy and he became more measured, though just as purposeful, in his strategising.
The afternoon rewards were there for all to see, and just for the moment he has a wee little "one-up" on his not-quite-friend Mr Smith - even if we also know which man's boots are the nicer to be in, in this merry old month of August.