Kevin Pietersen is a master of his art worth the trouble he causes

KEVIN Pietersen is a classic arsehole-genius; a man whose attitude and impossible nature make his team believe it is capable of anything.

KEVIN Pietersen is a classic arsehole-genius. He has always been Deco in The Commitments. Everyone in the band hated Deco because Deco was a complete pain in the arse. But he had the voice of an angel and they were nothing without him. He made the band and he destroyed the band. Or perhaps the band destroyed themselves because they couldn't face the fact that they needed him.

And when I say brilliant, I am not reaching for the nearest adjective. I mean brilliant as in quite exceptionally, almost ludicrously talented, talented in the way that very few people are in any sport. He could play the game as if it were the easiest thing in the world while making the finest players of his time look like overpromoted, overawed schoolkids.

Let's put him up there with Lionel Messi in football, Dan Carter in rugby union, Roger Federer in tennis; people who seem to have come to the game from a different dimension. Not just because they win a lot, but because for them the very act of engaging with a ball is radically different from anyone else's.

For that reason Pietersen was a game-changer. A series-changer. He was England's Eric Cantona, a man whose strut and attitude and impossible nature made his entire team believe that, as a unit, they were capable of anything. And at their best, no one could stand in their way.

We knew that he was capable of immense things when he was selected for the Ashes of 2005. In that agonising series, in which England had the upper hand but seemed desperately reluctant to land a final, killer blow, it was left to Pietersen to settle the matter. It was the Oval, the last day of the series, and it seemed that, after all, Australia would win the final Test, level the series and get away with the Ashes once again.

I was sitting in the press box, right behind Shane Warne, when he dropped Pietersen at slip. It was a fairly easy chance as they go, and although I was by no means a seasoned KP-watcher back then, I had a curious foreboding. Something was up. By the pricking of my thumbs, something special this way comes.

It bloody well did, too. It came after lunch, in circumstances when any sane cricketer would bat for a draw and so, even in failure, would receive only muted criticism. Pietersen risked the entire Ashes series and with it the foam-flecked fury of his newly adopted nation when he launched into a demented full-out assault on the Australia bowling, and on their spearhead, Brett Lee, in particular. It was as mad and glorious and effective a piece of sport as has ever been played.

It was better than Ian Botham's innings at Headingley in 1981, because Botham and England had nothing to lose. Had Pietersen blown it, he would have been nailed to the wall. But he didn't. He scored 158 runs, and that's how England won the Ashes and set off on the road that took them to the top nation.

It wasn't a one-off. It wasn't just that he scored other centuries for England. It was that he scored centuries that destroyed opponents and changed the course of cricketing history, and he did it again and again.

So let's have two more of my favourites, both innings I watched at the ground and reported on, days in which I felt humbled almost to the point of embarrassment at being allowed to do the job I do.

Let's go to Adelaide in 2010. England had come close to losing the first Test in Brisbane, but performed an inspiring self-rescue. In the next match, Pietersen took things a stage farther and played an innings of murderous certainty. This was no demented assault like the one at the Oval: this was a calculated assassination.

It wasn't joyful - it was too brutal for that. It involved a classic shift through the gears that left Pietersen looking like a heartless dad playing cricket with a beach-full of 10-year- olds. England won the series with three victories by an innings: the best England team I have ever seen.

It was that good because it contained perhaps the greatest game-breaker in the history of cricket, one who married the concentration and appetite of Test cricket to the power hitting and improvisation of the white-ball game and made top-level batting a business of sustained and unrelenting dominance.

One more for the album: Mumbai in 2012. England lost the first Test of the series in classic spin-friendly conditions and the Mumbai pitch had been prepared to produce exactly the same result. But Pietersen didn't see it like that. He took on the finest spin attack in the world on their terms, took on the greatest weapon of the team who always win at home, and made them look like Tewin Irregulars rejects. Inevitably, England went on to win the series.

Perhaps he could have done this again, once, maybe even twice. But England weren't prepared to pay the price. No doubt they told themselves he was a busted flush and no longer worth the trouble - and a very great deal of trouble it always was, too.

Me, I'm not convinced. I remember the great swimming coach, Bill Sweetenham, demanding of the Great Britain squad: "Who wants to be ordinary?" I think the England cricket team just put their hands up.

The Times