A genius of self-belief and desire

I toured with Kevin Pietersen, to India with England A in the winter of 2003-04. By then I'd already played with Carl Hooper, Steve Waugh and Rahul Dravid. But Pietersen, on that trip, played better than anyone I'd seen. He was like a man in a crowded room who knew exactly where he was going. Out the door, up the stairs, on to the next challenge. He was uncompromising, often gauche. But there was frankness about his epic ambition.

He told me the story, recounted in his new autobiography, of how Jason Gallian, the captain of Nottinghamshire, had thrown Pietersen's kit over the balcony when they were team-mates.

"Eddie, how would you like it if someone threw your laptop over the balcony?" He knew I was writing a book. But the fact that I had just played three Tests for England, was a professional cricketer, indeed on the same cricket tour as Pietersen - I had a kitbag that I wouldn't want thrown over the balcony, either - those facts didn't seem to register. What an odd thing, however kindly intended, to translate the story from a cricketing context into a writing one! It was as though Pietersen thought cricket wasn't a big enough part of my life for the story to make sense to me without being translated.

And for Pietersen it was different. Cricketing greatness was the only way - not one way, the way - that he would stamp his greatness on the world. His career and his life, his bat and his self-esteem, were completely intertwined. There was something honest about it, but also almost scary. Embryonic greatness poured out of him like incense. He wasn't stressed; he was certain.

That is the Pietersen who made three hundreds, in a cauldron of South African animosity, in his second ODI series. That is the Pietersen who scored two fifties in his first Test, a crushing Ashes defeat. That is the Pietersen who made 158 to secure the Ashes in 2005. And that is the Pietersen who invented the switch hit and inspired millions.

Trouble is, he went missing.

I've never liked the phrase "failed marriage". Must a marriage that ends prematurely be judged a failure? Don't we need a better phrase to describe something that might have been good for a long time and yet still ended badly? How should we weigh the good days against the sad ending? And how about the miserable marriages that drag on forever, bad all the way through? Must they be classified "successful marriages"?

Pietersen's book details just how bad his marriage with English cricket became. I don't doubt that it was, for both parties. But I challenge the presumption that the ending should take precedence over the whole. Pietersen played 104 Tests for England and scored more runs than anyone in an England shirt. What about that story? Sadly, through his own authorial choice of subjects, Pietersen has diminished the deeper, truer story: his pursuit of and lust for greatness.

By drawing attention to the calamitous finale, Pietersen hopes to put his side of the story. In doing so, he diminishes the space - in his book, and, alas, for his reputation - that will be given to the main body of work, when his brilliance was channelled towards scoring runs, or, more accurately, fulfilling his destiny.

Pietersen has a habit of assuming that change is always caused by other people. He praises Michael Vaughan and Duncan Fletcher, hammers Andy Flower and Peter Moores. To be sure, Fletcher had a different style from Flower. But the changes in Pietersen were at least as great as the changes in the dressing-room environment.

I played with and against Pietersen, admired his brilliance and self-belief, and knew - as certainly as I've ever known anything in sport - that he would surely become a great player. Let me tell you two stories about Pietersen from those early days, a flavour of just how good he was. Then we will consider where he is at today.

In 2001 I missed a one-dayer with a hand injury when Kent played against Nottinghamshire. Pietersen nearly won the game for Notts (they lost by one run). My Kent team-mate Matt Walker, a good player and a great team man, pulled me aside at training. "Great win. But you would have loved the way Pietersen batted." I'd never heard Matt say anything like that. It was as though, because I was a passionate student of batsmanship, I'd missed out on something special.

Two years later, we were again talking about Pietersen in the Kent dressing room - he was always talked about a lot - and Greg Blewett, the Australian Test player and our overseas pro, a very fair guy with an excellent cricket brain, just said casually, "He's the best one-day finisher I've ever played with." We carried on chatting. Hang on a minute, let's go back a step, Greg. You've played with Michael Bevan, Adam Gilchrist, Ricky Ponting, two Waughs and all the rest, and you're saying that a guy who hasn't played even one international match is the best? Thoughtful pause: "Yeah."

The instinctive honesty that caused those stories, then watching him bat from the non-striker's end in India, made me certain about one thing, more certain than anything I've ever known in sport: as long as Pietersen had that drive, nothing could stop him. Some players rely on skill to achieve greatness (Tendulkar), others technique and concentration (Dravid), some trust competitiveness (Ian Chappell), others physical virtuosity (Sobers). Pietersen was a genius of self-belief and desire.

When those gifts faded - and surely they did, for how else do we explain the tapering off in his ODI career, then his Test career? - he found the cricket dressing room disorientating. For someone like Pietersen not feeling special was a kind of torture, like being stripped of his identity. He was not a batsman first and foremost. He was an agent of destiny. Coming back to earth, a safe landing, proved harder than lift off.

Over the next few days we will hear the other side of the story, Pietersen's mistakes and misjudgements. His book calls out some senior players as "bullies". But others say that Pietersen himself made dismissive remarks to and about junior England players. Was his injured knee "more" injured when he wanted to leave a losing tour? By the very end, Pietersen seemed so bitter and unhappy in an England shirt that no one, surely, can have wanted the relationship to continue. Except, we are led to believe in the book, Pietersen himself, who says he still wants to play for England - but not so much that he was prepared to put in the hard yards in four-day cricket for Surrey in 2014 (he didn't play a single game).

There will be arguments about transparency, how the ECB should "put it all in the public domain". Yet the most pertinent facts are already known. The old Pietersen, the one I knew and admired, departed the world stage some time ago. Of course, there were always glimpses all the way to the end, even when he (just) headed the England run-charts on the fateful 2013-14 whitewash against Australia. But the old KP would not boast about averaging 29. In his pomp, he was playing on a higher plane, taking on the world.

For a while, he did, and he won. That story deserves to be remembered long after this messy divorce has fizzled into final bitter embers.