Pietersen must bury differences with coach Moores

English cricket took a giant leap into the unknown yesterday when the England and Wales Cricket Board anointed Kevin Pietersen as Michael Vaughan's successor as captain. Pietersen will become the 75th man to lead the England Test side on Thursday when they take on South Africa at The Oval, and his time in charge will not be dull.

How long his reign lasts is a moot point. The appointment could prove to be inspired. Pietersen possesses the drive, ambition and personality to lift a team and take it to a place it has rarely been before. There is, however, a reasonable chance that the arrangement could be a short-lived shocker. Pietersen (right) is his own man. The 28-year-old is impetuous and his man-management skills are untried.

Pietersen has not held back in telling team-mates what he thinks of them in the past and it will be interesting to see how these same players respond when he needs something from them. If he does not like or agree with what is taking place around him he could easily drop the job like a stone. During the next six months we will get a good idea of the direction in which Pietersen's tenure heads.

Central to Pietersen's success will be his relationship with Peter Moores, the England coach. For a team to be successful it is imperative the captain and coach get on. Duncan Fletcher, Moores' highly regarded predecessor, had an excellent working relationship with Nasser Hussain and Vaughan, Pietersen's predecessors. Fletcher dovetailed superbly with his captains prior to England's 2005 Ashes triumph and the team prospered.

It is generally accepted that the relationship between Moores and Pietersen, as well as that between the coach and several other senior members of the current side, has been somewhat fraught. And in an attempt to sort these issues out Moores drove to London on Sunday night to have a clear-the-air meeting with Pietersen. The ECB will be praying that their differences were settled. A relationship of such importance must start in unity if it is have any chance of succeeding.

"The crux of our meeting was to determine and decipher where Peter and I can take this England team," explained Pietersen. "Mooresy likes to challenge us on a daily basis. There are a lot of strong, opinionated characters in the dressing room and I sat down with Peter and we had a real good discussion on how we want to take the team forward.

"By moving from player to captain my position has completely changed and we need to unite, we need to get on the same hymn sheet and we need to go and get this team moving forward. I am absolutely 100 per cent confident that we can have a good working relationship and everything will be fine and good. I would not be sitting here if I didn't believe it would.

"It is a brand new test; a new challenge and I love challenges. I love to test myself out. I am fresh into this captaincy thing and I will need advice; I spoke to Michael Vaughan at great length on Sunday. One of the most exciting things is that I have had text messages and phone calls from the senior members of the squad, who have basically told me that they are right behind me and ready to support me. They told me to give it my best shot. Once you have got the support of the lads around you who you are with all the time, there is nothing more you can ask for."

It is interesting that Pietersen, a player who loves challenges, does not appear to enjoy the challenges Moores has been setting him, although it may have something to do with the way they are presented. Moores is a far intenser coach than Fletcher. He is constantly asking questions of his players, maybe too many. Unlike Fletcher, he does not fawn his favourites in the expectation that they will speak positively about him in public. Moores attempts to treat everyone equally. It could be such an approach is not truly appreciated by Ashes winners. It appears some of them do not enjoy being told what to do.

The desire of England's senior players to play in the lucrative Indian Premier League in 2009 is unlikely to help their relationship with the coach. Moores' responsibility is to England and he would prefer his players to stay away from India and rest before a hectic summer that includes the Twenty20 World Cup and the Ashes. The players, however, want to go there and fill their boots. They will believe that Moores is costing them money. The fact that the Test players will not be receiving a slice of the Sir Allen Stanford's $20m (£10.2m) has not gone down well either.

There is the question of whether the captaincy will affect Pietersen's form with the bat. The records of Graham Gooch and Michael Atherton improved during their time as captain, but Hussain and Vaughan failed to cope as well.

"Time will tell whether the captaincy affects my game. I hope it doesn't. I hope it won't restrict the way I play. I think it would be silly of me to start thinking that it will affect the way I play, because I play the way I play and it has brought me success so far in my career.

"This is a wonderful opportunity to grab with both hands and run with. I'm not going to be a wimp and say I'm not going to do it. I accept this challenge and I'll give it a real good go, like I give everything in my life a good go. I will be a gut instinct-orientated captain. I like to be spontaneous, do what is right at a situation. Over the years I have developed a pretty good cricket brain. I think of how I do things and my gut instinct when I've batted during the past four or five years when playing for England has assisted me tremendously. I will always ask for advice, listen to people and take the advice of people but I will also have my own way.

"This is all very exciting for me. It is a great honour, a great privilege to captain England and it is something that has turned my life around again in the last 24 hours. My wife was the first person I spoke to after being offered the job. I then phoned my mum and dad in South Africa and spoke to them at great length because it is a huge job. Michael [Vaughan] gave a very emotional speech when he resigned and spoke about his family, so it was right to speak to my wife and family before I accepted the job."

The England selectors have been kind to Pietersen, giving him, with the exception of Vaughan, who asked to be rested, the same squad of players who attended Edgbaston a week ago. The one addition to the side is Ravi Bopara, the prolific Essex all-rounder. Bopara had a miserable introduction to Test cricket, scoring just 42 runs in three Tests in Sri Lanka, but he has accumulated more than 1,700 runs in all cricket this season and deserves to be selected.

Whether Tim Ambrose and Ryan Sidebottom do is another matter. Ambrose is not scoring enough runs at No 6 and a heavy workload appears to be taking its toll on Sidebottom.

Pietersen's first decision will be reducing 13 to 11 and getting the balance of the team right. The eternal problem exists – do England play five batsmen and five bowlers or six and four? Paul Collingwood scored a hundred at Edgbaston to get England back in the Test, but they needed an extra bowler to put Graeme Smith's side under pressure in their second innings. Welcome to captaincy, KP.

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