Kevin Pietersen reaches 100 with the aplomb of a champion

MIDGE KELLY, the fictional boxer of Ring Lardner's short story Champion, made Mike Tyson look like an angel. His first knockout was his younger, crippled brother; he beat up his mum, and he cheated on legions of trainers, friends and women, but in print, he was sugar-coated. As the newspaper editor in the story said to his young reporter: "People don't want to see him knocked down. He's champion."

If that seems an odd way to come to Kevin Pietersen, who is playing his 100th Test for England at the Gabba, then the tale goes to the heart of how we judge our sportsmen. Do we have to like them? Does it matter that Tiger Woods cheated on his wife countless times? Or, in these days when no newspaper editor would sanction such docile treatment of Lardner's "hero", are their deeds enough?

Now, before a lawyer's letter lands on my doorstep, let me hasten to add that Pietersen, to my knowledge, has done nothing to be likened to Kelly, or Woods for that matter. I don't know him particularly well, have had dinner with him only a couple of times, but I have always found him to be exceptionally polite and charming. I am, of course, aware that he might behave differently towards me. Professionally, I've always found him to be, well, very professional, and he has always trained and practised fiercely. A model pro.

However, it is clear that he divides opinion. Whenever I do a Q&A, I make a habit of taking a snap poll. Who likes Pietersen? The reaction is always mixed: many do, many don't. The question is the wrong one, of course. If I asked how many think Pietersen is a top-class batsman, then the answer would be unequivocal. It brooks no argument.

Pietersen is disliked by some for a variety of reasons. Some think he should not be playing for England. Some dislike his apparently un-English characteristics: his brashness, his gaucheness, his conspicuous consumption. Some of my colleagues in the print media dislike the fact that he plays by different rules and speaks infrequently (rather like Sachin Tendulkar). Some find it hard to forgive the behaviour two summers ago that led to the downfall of a popular England captain, Andrew Strauss.

The Australian press, which has taken to lampooning him in recent days, dislike him because he's good and he's ours. The Courier Mail was at it again this week, firing the final shot of a phoney war that with every passing Ashes series seems to get phonier. Alongside a picture of Pietersen arriving at Brisbane airport looking glum was the headline: "The ego has landed. He's so arrogant not even his own team likes him."

Likes or dislikes are not an irrelevant question to sports fans, who ally themselves with a player for all kinds of reasons. We might like how a player carries himself under pressure; how he reacts to adversity or how the context of his life plays out on the sporting arena. In short, we look for character. It would be a bit boring if likes or dislikes were formed only according to performance. There would be no room in our hearts for the quirky performer or the journeyman, the valiant trier who fails time and again but dusts himself down and has another go.

But these questions are personal and subjective. Judgment of a player's career needs to be more objective than that. Only three areas really need concern us: how that player has performed, in the context of his era and history, how that player has had an impact upon his team, and whether, as a temporary custodian of the game, he has left it in better shape than he found it.

Pietersen's performances place him among the greatest England batsmen to have played the game. He was the quickest, in terms of time, to 4000, 5000 and 7000 runs in history. He has more Test match hundreds than any England player bar Alastair Cook; more than Colin Cowdrey, Len Hutton, Wally Hammond or Geoffrey Boycott. He has succeeded in all three formats of the game, a challenge known only to the most modern players.

In that time, he has produced some of the most memorable and significant innings ever by an England player. Randomly, I could pick out his 158 at The Oval in 2005, his first Test hundred and one that confirmed England's Ashes renaissance; his 142 a year later at Birmingham, when he put Muttiah Muralitharan, one of the greatest spinners in history, to the sword; his 158 at Adelaide that winter, when Shane Warne was forced to run up the white flag; his 152 at Lord's against South Africa in 2008, when at last England fans seemed to take him to their hearts; his 227 at Adelaide in 2010 that confirmed England's Ashes domination: a blistering 149 at Headingley against the best pace attack in the world, South Africa; and his magnificent 186 in Mumbai, on a rank turner. Quite a list.

His impact on the England team has been transformative. Already on the rise in 2005, when Pietersen came into the England team, it still needed the final piece of the jigsaw to be put in place. It needed a player to help it break out of the pack. He has been involved in what will be seen as one of the most successful eras of English cricket, a period that brought Ashes dominance, the rise to the top of the Test match rankings and a first global one-day trophy (the World Twenty20, in which Pietersen played a significant role). Other players have more than done their share, but he has been the player that opposition teams have feared and still fear.

A black mark has been the occasional truculence that has played out in public and had a disruptive effect on various teams that he has played for. At his pre-Test match press conference here, Pietersen conceded the error of his ways, without ever really suggesting any contrition. But great players often carry baggage: England's greatest player of a previous generation, Ian Botham, brought a few issues of his own. It often goes with the territory.

And the game? How has Pietersen had an impact upon it? Attempting to do justice to his talent, he has done so in a way that has only benefited the game. He has batted in an aggressive, attractive and stylish manner, bringing flair and introducing almost a new language to batting. The "flamingo", the "switch-hit" and the "Red Bull run" are terms that did not really exist before Pietersen.

He has changed expectations and heightened possibilities. Let's face it, spectators don't rush to their seats to watch Cook or Jonathan Trott, which is not to devalue the role that either of those batsmen play, but they do to watch Pietersen.

He is never dull.

Objectively, then, there is no argument against Pietersen's greatness, notwithstanding his occasional errors and his flaws. As a writer and commentator on the game, there is no England batsman I would rather watch; nor, in 30 years of association with English cricket, have I seen a better batsman wearing the crown and three lions. Champion, indeed.

THE TIMES