What Can Surrey Realistically Expect from Kevin Pietersen in 2015?
The hashtag in Kevin Pietersen's tweet read "#comeback."
Just under two weeks after his re-signing with Surrey was made official on March 25, the former England batsman was preparing for his first training session of 2015 with the same county outfit that had ruled out his return as recently as January.
A comeback, indeed.
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Of course, this is a move that has been triggered by the incoming England and Wales Cricket Board chairman, Colin Graves, who according to The Guardian's Ali Martin has spoken with Pietersen about a possible return to the England Test side.
The necessity for such an occurrence?
Runs at county level. In four-day cricket.
And plenty of them.
Admittedly, there are countless aspects of the Pietersen saga that need to be addressed and resolved before a return to the England team for the flamboyant batsman is both a) realistic and b) logical.
There are relationships to repair with players, coaches and administrators. An exact place in the team needs to be identified (remember, despite England's dreadful World Cup campaign, the team won its last Test series 3-1 against India). And then there's a matter of form, or lack thereof—Pietersen hasn't played a first-class game since his last Test appearance at the end of the 2013-14 Ashes series.
Thus, it all starts with Surrey. Before any possibilities can be genuinely considered, Pietersen needs to show he's worthy of selection for purely cricketing reasons.
So what can Surrey expect?
What's important to acknowledge, and it's a point the South African-born star noted himself in a column for The Telegraph, is that his return to county cricket will be restricted to one format—the four-day version:
"This is just a four-day deal initially because I want to concentrate on playing red-ball cricket. I have played so much T20 over the last 14 months that I know I can play that format, but I now need to knuckle down and spend some time in four-day cricket. The way I batted in the Big Bash gave me real confidence and I feel I am playing as well as ever. I am not guaranteed any runs early season but I will be doing everything I can to be in form for when the Test matches start in the summer.
"
Such a decision might prove critical to Pietersen's chances of being successful upon his return to the county level. For more than a year he's smashed white balls around grounds in rapid time; now he'll need to become reacquainted with the subtleties of first-class batting.
Yet recent evidence also suggests that as a batsman who's recently been a domestic Twenty20 freelancer, he also has a trend he needs to reverse in the game's longer formats.
As the table below highlights, Pietersen's Test form had been in decline prior to his sacking, with his last complete year in the game, 2013, standing as the least productive year of a career that began in 2005:
| 2005 | 8 | 674 | 158 | 44.93 | 2 | 3 |
| 2006 | 14 | 1343 | 158 | 53.72 | 4 | 6 |
| 2007 | 11 | 1007 | 226 | 50.35 | 4 | 1 |
| 2008 | 12 | 1015 | 152 | 50.75 | 5 | 1 |
| 2009 | 11 | 760 | 102 | 47.50 | 1 | 5 |
| 2010 | 14 | 831 | 227 | 41.55 | 1 | 5 |
| 2011 | 8 | 731 | 202* | 73.10 | 2 | 4 |
| 2012 | 14 | 1053 | 186 | 43.87 | 3 | 4 |
| 2013 | 11 | 758 | 113 | 36.09 | 1 | 6 |
| 2014 | 1 | 9 | 6 | 4.50 | 0 | 0 |
Certainly, part of that could be attributed to the disenchantment he experienced with the environment inside the England setup prior to his axing—something he expressed at length both in an interview with Paul Hayward of The Telegraph last October and in his own book, KP: The Autobiography.
But it also can't be ignored that Pietersen is a 34-year-old—he'll be 35 when the Ashes arrive in England in July—who's past a batsman's prime years (typically 28-32), who's spent more than a year away from the game's most demanding format and whose most recent record against a red ball isn't close to those at the peak of his career.
Just county cricket it may be, but his return won't be a straightforward, joyous stroll around the championship's grounds.
Interestingly, for an example of a Test player returning to the domestic game, you could look to the recent case of Jonathan Trott.
Though Trott's exit from the international arena was due to very different circumstances—a stress-related issue rather than a conflict with team management—his 2014 campaign with Warwickshire, in which he scored 620 runs at an average of 47.69, serves as some sort of indication of what an experienced Test player returning to the county circuit after a turbulent period might be able to expect.
For a player of Pietersen's astonishing talent, an average in the mid-40s certainly seems attainable, even when considering his significant absence. It could also be realistic, couldn't it?
But naturally, it's tempting to think he's capable of significantly more—something in the 50s. However, keep in mind that Kane Williamson averaged a tick above 57 for Yorkshire last year. Chris Rogers averaged just over 55 for Middlesex.
Both men, of course, have remained flat out in the Test arena. Those lofty averages were achievable because of an ongoing existence at the game's pinnacle.
Pietersen hasn't had that. He's been in coloured clothing. Facing white balls. Behind microphones.
The challenge is greater.
For his part, Alec Stewart, Surrey's director of cricket, is confident Pietersen's return will be a success—not only from a personal perspective but also in terms of the leadership and guidance Stewart believes he can provide.
"Yes, we need good cricketers, but we also need good people," the former England wicketkeeper said, via George Dobell of ESPN Cricinfo. "We are trying to bring through young players who learn and do the right thing. Jason Roy, for example has learnt so much from KP. He has huge respect, looks up to him and would like to emulate what KP has done as a player.
"We've gained a very ambitious, very good player. That's why we've brought him back in."
The thing is, we just don't know how good. He's unlikely to be the player he once was, but, from this point forward, no one can be certain just what he could be.
Pietersen has proved people wrong his whole life. Now he has a chance to do so again.
The comeback is on.
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