Pietersen retires

After a decade and a half (roughly) of alternately thrilling and frustratig us, Kevin Pietersen is calling it a day. He only rarely produced the goods for Hampshire, as he was centrally contracted and playing international cricket for most of his time with us.

Hard to think of a more divisive England batsman in recent years, and impossible to think of a better one - in ability at least. Admired rather than liked by fellow players and fans alike, but I’m not sure that I can think of any batsman I’ve seen play shots like Pietersen did, other than Viv Richards. There’s an excellent article on him on the BBC website, from which I particularly like this quote:

Great players don’t just score great innings. They change games and win matches.

As an example, Dean Jones scored a lot of runs for Australia, and made some great innings. But his best knocks always seemed to come either when his team were toatally on top, or in a lost cause. Pietersen’s didn’t - on many occasions they made all the difference.

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Great player. Crap human.

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He defined Mercurial

Excellent…