Cricket: Pietersen Delights and Frustrates in Equal Measure

You will never change Kevin Pietersen nor he himself. The skunk has gone from his head to be replaced by a crop. This time next year it might be a pony tail. But his batting, one feels, will always carry the capacity to delight and frustrate in equal measure. On his day - and there are a lot of them - he can turn a match in an hour. On another he can cause supporters to want to bang their heads on the table Basil Fawlty style.

In the first innings of the second Test in Mohali his exuberance and a rush of adrenaline caused him to miss out on a century when it was really needed. Second time around, an unwise sweep led to an erroneous umpire's decision, given out caught from his forearm, and his subsequent petulant reaction led to him being relieved of one third of his match fee.

"I shouldn't have reacted as I did," he admitted yesterday. "I got cross and carried away because in the past it has been in tough circumstances that I have come good. I needed to bat for a couple more hours and it is the first time in my career that I have really been upset. I was mad for about 10 minutes."

He knows, though, that rough goes with smooth, that in Nagpur, when he was in the process of putting England into a sound position in the second innings, he should have been given out by the third umpire, caught and bowled. "But I got away with something there, and maybe there was something, an lbw perhaps, in the Ashes series. It does even itself out I believe."

So far in the series he has made two half-centuries without kicking on to three figures although he does feel that overall he has played responsibly as befits a No4 batsman.

"I think I've done that," he said. "You have got to have more responsibility at four than five, and it is something I have taken on board. I may have missed a silly shot in the first innings in Nagpur but I could have got a hundred in the second if I had been selfish. I was disappointed in Mohali, though, because I wanted to book in for bed and breakfast on that pitch."

Pietersen's technique, with its dominant bottom hand, has been an eye-opener for those whose first sight this has been. At times against the spinners it has had old twirlers salivating as they envisage the return catches from the leading edge that they might have landed. But they reckon without supreme hand-eye coordination that with a roll of his wrists sends the ball scudding impossibly along the deck.

"Where did I learn to play like that?" he said. "Not a clue. But I know that if I just allow the spinners bowl to me they will get me out. I let Shane Warne do that to me for a while last summer before I decided to be positive. I know there is a need to build an innings and be patient, especially out here, but you can be positive in defence. So I make sure I take a good stride at Anil Kumble. I'm comfortable with it."

He admits - and not just for Indian consumption - to being an admirer of Rahul Dravid. "I've watched him," he said, "how he builds an innings and I do think that in the first innings in Mohali I was a lot more patient and selective. Rahul is a great player whose intention is to book himself in every time he goes to the crease. I like to watch players I respect, who I feel privileged to be on the same field as."

But he cannot see himself reining in like Dravid and disappearing into a cocoon. He is not about to abandon the essence of his game. "I do try to keep things simple and not build mountains out of molehills," he said. "Instinct plays a big part in my game and I've been pretty successful with it. I know that in key moments I have to recognise that I might need to be a bit more cautious. But I'm not going to beat myself up over it."