KP Breaks The Wall!

IPL T20 fever has started again with just another couple of days before the second edition of the most sought after cricket tournament gets under way. It’s funny that it is still addressed as Indian Premier League even though the tournament is moved to South Africa. As a Bangalorean, I will be supporting Bangalore Royal Challengers even though the team performed badly in the first edition. There are changes in the team this time with the maverick Kevin Pietersen being roped in as Captain. Rahul Dravid has lost captaincy following the team’s dismal performance during the last chapter. Ray Jennings has been appointed as Coach.

Enter Pietersen, a man who takes hard options and knows he's good. It makes him gloriously un-English. 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 Ray Jennings, a coach who revels in his straight-talking toughness 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. He sure is going the football way.

There's more. Pietersen’s first game will be up 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 is against Andrew Flintoff, the man who denies having anything to do with his downfall as England captain. There is no doubt that cricket followers in South Africa would want Pietersen to fail miserably.

With so much against him much before the start, Pietersen certainly has a tough road ahead. He is a tough bloke and quite capable of turning the tide to his favour and all we can hope is that he does that quickly and ensures he not only proves to Vijay Mallya but to ECB Selectors also. The success will do a world of good to him when he locks his horns against Aussies for The Ashes.

Good luck Kev.