The Spin

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In this week's Spin: Another chapter for KP; Machiavellian Warne

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DON'T TAKE YOUR EYES OFF THIS ONE

This week, apologies in advance: if you're sick of reading about Kevin Pietersen, you have this column's sympathy. But a chat with his temporary coach, Ray Jennings of the Bangalore Royal Challengers, has persuaded us that - in the week the Indian Premier League begins here in South Africa - the latest chapter in the Pietersen parable is just too good to ignore.

English cricket is always flagellating itself for being soft and taking the easy option. It's one reason - that, and the weather - for the silly number of draws in the county championship (the figure for non-abandoned matches in 2008 was a snoozeworthy 53%). And yet English cricket remains stupidly suspicious of immodest excellence. Enter Pietersen, a man who takes hard options and knows he's good. It makes him gloriously unEnglish. The task he is about to undertake with the Bangalore Royal Challengers just about sums him up.

Think about it for a moment. Pietersen is returning to a country where voluble sections of the crowd regard him as a traitor. He will be captaining two men - Jacques Kallis and Mark Boucher - who probably have their own views on his decision to leave South Africa. He will be playing for a coach who revels in his straight-talking toughness (yesterday, he told us Pietersen "doesn't score enough runs") and for an owner - the whisky, airline and F1 magnate Vijay Mallya - whose expectations of success are such that last year he sacked his chief executive mid-tournament. What does he think this is? Football?

There's more. Pietersen will do the job for two weeks only, thus setting himself up for further accusations of being a mercenary, and his first game will be against Shane Warne, who used to regard him as a close friend but now thinks him "weird" and will do everything he possibly can to make him look a dummy. His second game? That's against Andrew Flintoff, the bloke who denies having anything to do with his downfall as England captain. And all this after he admitted to the Daily Mail that he was "at the end of his tether" in the Caribbean and wanted to go home.

Parts of the scenario are of his own making and few will have much sympathy when his pro-rata earnings from a headline fee of $1.55m would be enough to buy a second-division centre-back. But the potential pratfalls are so many that you wonder about the sanity of an already very rich man in going along for the ride.

There are a few explanations. Money is one, and let's not pretend otherwise. Ego is another, although Pietersen's famous self-regard is no more intact than that of certain other members of the England team: he's just more honest about it. A desire to show the England and Wales Cricket Board that he can thrive as a captain, however briefly, must have come into the equation.

Then there's the notion of excellence, a simple enough idea that is easy to miss when the Pietersen peripherals are obscuring your vision. If the switch-hit symbolizes his penchant for pushing himself that bit further, he also regards the IPL as an opportunity for English batsmen to catch up with Indians, Australians and South Africans. And he does so with a ruthless simplicity: "It's important for our players to learn how to hit fours and sixes," he said last month. "You can do that in Twenty20 cricket and you can practise it. You must practise it in order to play it." It was no surprise to learn that Pietersen, scheduled to arrive in Johannesburg this morning, had asked Jennings to organise an immediate net session.

Lots could go wrong for Pietersen in the next couple of weeks. Lots of people here in South Africa certainly hope so. Failing that, he'll probably improve spectacularly on a Twenty20 record of three fifties in 29 innings. Either way - and regardless of your thoughts on the IPL - you have to admit the Pietersen parable is worth watching.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The thing is, I'm the only guy in the team without a driver's licence" - Rory Kleinveldt, man of the match during Cape Cobras' Twenty20 win over Rajasthan Royals, is underwhelmed with his prize of a car

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EXTRAS

The Spin arrived in Cape Town on Sunday night, staggered that an extra 4kg in its suitcase could net KLM over £100 in excess-baggage fees yet reassured to discover that Jim Carrey loses none of his aggravating goofiness on tiny aeroplane TV screens. Just as heartening was the reminder that Shane Warne, more than two years after his retirement from Test cricket, retains the ability to generate headlines simply by answering questions directly and not cracking that hilarious gag about coaches being the things you get to grounds in. (Note to self: never use the Warne coach rib-tickler in an intro again. It's demeaning.)

Warne, you may recall, has another career these days as a poker player (remember his calmness when another lbw appeal was turned down!) and captain of the all-conquering Rajasthan Royals, who on Saturday took time off from their winning ways to lose to the Cape Cobras by 28 runs at Newlands. But what caught the locals' attention was Warne's post-match claim that he let the Cobras off the hook, deliberately not using his best bowlers because - with the opposition struggling at 34 for 4 - he wanted the Royals to have a bigger total to chase down. "I did not want it to be a 100-run innings," he said afterwards with the straightest of faces. "I wanted to see how the batsmen would react to chasing down a big total."

Not very well, was the answer: replying to the Cobras' 142 for 8, the Royals slipped to 119 all out. But, smelling a rat where none existed, the Cape Times hit back. "Warne gets his excuses in quickly after Cobras' victory over IPL champions," declared its headline. Which doesn't quite explain why Warne took off his 18-year-old wunderkind Kamran Khan (first-class experience: nil) with figures of 1-0-1-1. Even the Cape Times had to concede that it was "one bowling change on Warne's part which did seem strange". But then that, as we may discover in the weeks ahead, is probably one definition of a Machiavellian genius: when you speak the truth, others infer duplicity. The Spin will be trying it out on unsuspecting South Africans.

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WISDEN - THE WINNERS

Bamboozled by the Spin? Shame on you. Well, many of you. Wisden's leading cricketer in the world for 2008 was not, as many enthrants thought, Claire Taylor (she was one of Wisden's Five Cricketers of the Year, a quite different award), but Virender Sehwag. Congratulations and a copy of the 2009 Almanack go to Sam Monteath, David Uren and Richard Woolhouse. Thanks and commiserations to everyone else.

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THE WEEK IN CRICKET

· To the sound of one last nail being hammered in, Matthew Hoggard is left out of England's 25-man development squad, having been included in the 2008 list. Sajid Mahmood and James Foster make the list.

· England's coaching short-list gets shorter as Mickey Arthur says he can't walk away from his contract with South Africa, which runs until April 2012. "I've never made a secret of my ambition to coach in England one day - I had always hoped it would be with a county - but who knows what might happen in the future?" he says.

· Trouble in paradise as Bermuda lose their one-day international status following their failure to reach the Super Eights stage of the World Cup qualifying event in South Africa. A 63-run defeat to the Netherlands is the death knell, leaving their West Indian coach Gus Logie to lament: "No one seemed to really care that much."

· Centuries from Richard Jones and Anaru Kitchen - his third in only eight first-class innings - help Auckland to a five-wicket win over Central Districts in the final of New Zealand's first-class State Championship at the Bert Sutcliffe Oval in Lincoln.

· South Africa move into a 2-1 lead in their one-day series against Australia thanks to a 25-run win at Cape Town. Jacques Kallis (70) and AB de Villiers (80) deserve most of the bouquets, although Roelof van der Merwe, playing only his second ODI, takes 3 for 37 with his left-arm spin.

· A century from Herschelle Gibbs, plus 84 from 74 balls by the irrepressible de Villiers then secures South Africa the series as they beat Australia by 61 runs in the fourth game at Port Elizabeth. Four wickets from Dale Steyn wraps things up as the Aussies fall short in pursuit of 318.

· Michael Vaughan responds to the Spin's call for his inclusion in England's Test team by making 12 for MCC against Durham at Lord's before falling to Mitchell Claydon. Ian Bell also makes 12 in a rain-ruined game, leaving the headlines to Ian Blackwell (102 not out in 109 balls) on his Durham debut and their new captain Will Smith (71 not out).

· If it wasn't clear before, it is now: Marcus Trescothick will not play for England again, despite being asked by Andrew Strauss to reconsider a comeback in the World Twenty20. "I really hope everyone can accept that part of my story is over for good," says Trescothick. "It is time for me and for England to move on."

· Afghanistan's hopes of reaching the World Cup finals receive an almost-fatal blow when they lose by six wickets to Canada in the Super Eight stages of the qualifying tournament in South Africa. Afghanistan had reached the last eight with a shock victory over Ireland, but an unbeaten 96 from Ian Billcliff takes Canada home with nine balls to spare.

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CONTACT THE SPIN

Email lawrence.booth@guardian.co.uk and feel free to cc. sports.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk while you're at it.

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