IPL Day Five - In Praise of Pietersen

There was a thunderous, angry edge to Day Five of the IPL. Perhaps it was the sight of an ominously dark Table Mountain wreathed in broiling orange clouds as the sun set behind Cape Town. Maybe it was the guttural roar from a nameless man in red as a lofted shot from Rohit Sharma landed yards from a Bangalore fielder. Or perhaps the percussive savagery of flashing willow on white leather as Gilchrist, Sharma and Dravid strained at the bonds with which so many batting Gullivers have been tied down by bowlers of Lilliputian reputation.

Whatever it was, there seemed to be steam building up under this IPL at last. And the man stoking the boiler was the Pietermaritzburg Maestro himself. Kevin Pietersen was today not just captain of Bangalore but pumper-up-in-chief. He roared encouragement, he clapped his hands ferociously, he demanded snappier fielding from the dilatory Praveen Kumar and he generally strutted about the field as though he not only owned it, but everyone on it and their houses, their wives and girlfriends too. And it was no fitful or fair-weather performance. He was a constant pressuring force. None could rest.

This was not the Pietersen who had been so eager to please last August; who had taken pains to try and win over the England dressing room, who had agreed to work with a coach he didn’t think was the right man. This was not the Pietersen who put out mixed messages about the Stanford debacle; who stood forlornly at mid-on as Yuvraj gave England an ass-whupping in India; who wanted Michael Vaughan back in the team to help him with the job he had accepted.

Some thought that this restless, intense individual would chuck in captaincy altogether when it turned out to be something he couldn’t immediately excel at. They were wrong. For Bangalore and with the help of Ray Jennings, he has returned to it with renewed ferocity, with the ruthless determination he applies to perfecting his batting technique. And with every game, he improves. The moment when he jogged thirty yards to the stricken Karan Sharma to tell the youngster to keep his head up after dropping a catch, was pure, natural captaincy.

But Mike Brearley himself could not have saved the Royal Challengers today. Adam Gilchrist deftly dismembered the Bangalore bowling with the brutal expertise of a butcher reducing a carcass. And then Rohit Sharma smeared the remains all over the Cape Town sky. I’d swear that for the biggest of his sixes off Jesse Ryder, the ball paused for a second at the peak of its steepling trajectory, as though the gods themselves had slowed the flight of the ball to wonder at what pure timing and trained muscle can do. Bangalore will not be the last to feel the Deccan Charge this IPL.