Ian Herbert: The Ashes will demand something special – like Kevin Pietersen, perhaps

COMMENT: It feels as if this Ashes summer will be about preserving dignity and avoiding a whitewash

Surrey player Kevin Pietersen makes his way to the wicket during day one off the LV County Championships Division Two match between Glamorgan and Surrey (GETTY IMAGES)

The history man James Anderson, soaring to the top of England’s all-time Test wicket-taking list on Friday, obscured the rather brutal reality of what you have to fear this Ashes summer is going to look like.

The sight of West Indies – not exactly a benchmark for Test cricket excellence these days – holding on for a draw in that match in Antigua said so much about the potency of the bowling attack Australia are going to encounter here.

We are 10 years on from the greatest Ashes series of them all, clinched by an England side with three men with 90mph pace within them. And who do we have with that speed now? Liam Plunkett, a man on the wrong side of 30 with a history of injuries, as Simon Hughes observes in this month’s Cricketer magazine.

It all points to what we knew when England headed out to the World Cup: that they are going to need to score heavily to put any kind of pressure on opponents, and will require someone capable of taking them into the realms of the unexpected this summer. And though it runs against the grain of popular opinion within cricket, where so many view Kevin Pietersen as a one-man walking pariah who must never, ever, be allowed back, the cold truth is that England need the potential he brings. How has the indignity of the World Cup not quickened the sense of it?

Pietersen’s return to the county game for Surrey at Cardiff yesterday was viewed only as a piece of choreographed posturing, his 170 against MCC Universities Oxford last week a minor inconvenience for those who want him put back in the box for all time. But the size of the crowd yesterday at Sophia Gardens – where he reached 19 from 28 balls before falling to his South African compatriot Craig Meschede – tells the other side of the story. The attraction of Pietersen, as much as his understanding of what it takes to deliver in the environment England will face from an Australia buoyed by the events of the World Cup, weighs against the conviction that those bruised by his autobiography ought not to have to share a dressing room with him again.

The England and Wales Cricket Board had a hand in the turmoil that book created last October. Since when do you sack a player for unspecified reasons because you feel he is a malign presence – as it did – rather than just omit him from the team and let his central contract run down? There are more intelligent ways of dealing with recalcitrance, as the former Labour director of communications Alastair Campbell’s new book on success in business, sport and politics Winners shows.

The solutions reside in transparency, firm leadership, confronting power struggles head on and acknowledging that conflicts need not necessarily destroy a team ethic, Campbell told me a few weeks ago. The prime exponent of this philosophy? Sir Alex Ferguson – who knew a bit about egos and rebels.

Ferguson was the man who allowed Eric Cantona to dress however he wanted, while everyone else had to stick to the dress code. And who accepted that Cristiano Ronaldo did not want to be in Manchester that last season of 2008-09 but whose pride did not prevent him taking a plane to Lisbon to persuade him to give it one more year. It was Ferguson’s counsel, particularly cherished during the throes of general elections, which contributed to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown co-existing for so long.

I’ve always thought that Andrew Strauss’s autobiography said more than enough to demonstrate why persisting with Pietersen the rule-breaker was worthwhile. “Unbridled by team directives or predetermined methods, Pietersen could play in a way of which others were simply incapable,” Strauss wrote. He went on to say that the dispute left players feeling uneasy and expressed frustration at Pietersen getting all the publicity. But players don’t care about the differences when a team is winning. And one player getting the headlines can actually take pressure off the rest.

The Australians seem to have the greater capacity to put troubles behind them. Take any example you like, but the story Adam Gilchrist tells of how he was given the Australia vice-captaincy after Shane Warne had been deposed, because of a News of the World kiss-and-tell, sums it up.

Gilchrist feared his ensuing meeting with Warne – who was the better vice-captain – but need not have. “I knew that Warnie was heartbroken, in a way, about his whole captaincy ambitions but to his credit he never white-anted or challenged me,” Gilchrist wrote. “I never felt that he held it against me.”

Kevin Pietersen picks up some runs for Surrey on Sunday (GETTY IMAGES)

It is hard to conceive of Jason Gillespie, the Yorkshire coach who has such an excellent relationship with Colin Graves, the new ECB chairman, dismissing the notion of Pietersen belonging in the ranks, if the Australian could only be persuaded to take on the England job. Gillespie’s appointment would certainly be welcome, though Graves seems to have his work cut out persuading him of the wisdom of taking over from Peter Moores just now, ahead of such a formidable summer. Moores’ future beyond the West Indies certainly looks uncertain.

Surrey were at pains to insist that their fixture in Cardiff was not all about Pietersen. There was not the role at the top of the order which it had been felt might suit him and his knock did not provide empirical evidence of England form. His return to the fold certainly needs to be predicated on him displaying some of that. But it feels as if this Ashes summer will be about preserving dignity and avoiding a whitewash. Something less than conventional and with Pietersen-sized self-confidence is going to be needed.

For a truly thrilling show, just look one level down

Home not long before midnight on Saturday, I stumbled across The Football League Show, 45 minutes or so of sensational Championship matches. Triumph, disaster, goals and so much hingeing upon it all that you wondered why the BBC had not just ripped up the schedules and broadcast it first, rather than the preceding Premier League offering.

What do they say the value of a Premier League game will be in the landscape of the new TV deal? £19m? The Championship’s sunshine football this weekend was priceless. Four teams separated by three points and a further four divided by four points in the last play-off push.

The usual Premier League hegemony have all but sorted out the top honours. There is infinitely more to watch one level below, at the home of football as we once knew it.