Kevin Pietersen will tonight make his first appearance of what he claims will be his final summer in England.
Pietersen is expected to play for Surrey in their Twenty20 meeting with Essex at The Kia Oval on Wednesday, hoping to give the team a lift after they lost their last two matches. The match is sold out.
Pietersen last played for England in the Ashes defeat at Sydney in January 2014. He was effectively sacked by Paul Downton, the ECB chief executive at the time, who decided Pietersen’s behaviour in Australia had damaged the team.
Incoming ECB chairman Colin Graves appeared to open the door for Pietersen to return a year later, but that avenue was quickly shut down by Pietersen’s former team-mate Andrew Strauss, now ECB managing director.
Since then, Pietersen has pursued a freelance Twenty20 career. As well as playing in the T20 Blast, he has competed in the Indian Premier League, Australia’s Big Bash, the Caribbean Premier League, the Pakistan Super League and South Africa’s Ram Slam.
Now 37, there is no chance Pietersen will ever play again for England again. He knows it, too. “I reckon this will be my last summer here,” Pietersen said last month.
Despite Pietersen’s ever-changing world, his Surrey colleague Aaron Finch still expects him to make an impact. Finch told Standard Sport: “He is one of the all-time great players of the modern era, in all forms of the game, but especially Twenty20.
“For a guy to be able to come in to tournaments around the world and dominate, as he does in the Big Bash, is extraordinary. He is able to do it even when he hasn’t picked up a bat for a couple of months. I am pretty happy to have him on our side, rather than to be playing against him.”
