Pietersen facing decision of a lifetime

October 3, 2000 by neil manthorp

Neil Man­thorp — 03/10/2000

Fol­low­ing last week’s rev­e­la­tions about the predica­ment fac­ing young KwaZu­lu Natal all rounder Kevin Pietersen, I can con­firm that the mas­sive­ly tal­ent­ed 21-year-old is fac­ing, pos­si­bly, the tough­est deci­sion of his life.

For those who missed last week’s col­umn, allow me to re-cap briefly. Pietersen, most def­i­nite­ly a poten­tial inter­na­tion­al, spent the SA win­ter play­ing crick­et in Eng­land and was select­ed for sev­er­al War­wick­shire 2nd XI match­es in which he per­formed well.

Man­ag­er of near-neigh­bours Not­ting­hamshire, Clive Rice, offered Pietersen a huge­ly tempt­ing con­tract that would require the Mar­itzburg-born crick­eter to renounce the land of his birth (at least as far as crick­et is con­cerned) to play in Eng­land as a local play­er. He would, inci­den­tal­ly, qual­i­fy to play for Eng­land after four years.

The only way he could have car­ried on his duel-nation­al­i­ty career was by play­ing for KwaZu­lu Natal as an over­seas pro­fes­sion­al. That option would take a gigan­tic leap of faith for the province; and how would the UCB feel about a province nur­tur­ing a young tal­ent in order for him to play for a rival nation?

“What would you do?” said KZN CEO Cas­sim Docrat when asked whether the union would keep the right-hand­ed bats­man and off-break bowler. “We’d love to keep him but it’s his choice. You can’t have the best of both worlds.”

Pietersen has been with­drawn from the KZN squad while he makes his mind up, and my sym­pa­thies are with him as he pon­ders the choic­es avail­able to him.

Take the offer, make a new life in Eng­land, make good mon­ey. Leave the land of your birth, your friends, your fam­i­ly. What about injury? What if it does­n’t work out in the UK? What about the weath­er, the people…and what about the money?

If it is any con­so­la­tion to Pietersen, he is not alone. To the best of my knowl­edge, there are approx­i­mate­ly 20 reg­u­lar first-team provin­cial crick­eters cur­rent­ly play­ing in South Africa and many of them have been approached by Eng­lish coun­ties. Greg Smith (North­erns) has said ‘yes’ and there are many more who could do the same.

“It’s a wor­ry­ing sit­u­a­tion, I’ll be hon­est,” admit­ted nation­al coach Gra­ham Ford. “It would weak­en our whole sys­tem if they start­ed leav­ing. It’s not some­thing any of us would want to see.”