The Cantona of cricket

You just can’t keep Kevin Pietersen out of the news; he probably likes that. But at the moment it is his lack of form with the bat that is making headlines and The Times’ Simon Barnes feels he is taking a leaf out of the book of a famous French footballer.

Kevin Pietersen is suffering from an inferiority complex. He keeps thinking he’s just the same as everybody else. And it has devastated him. Dropped! Dropped from an England team who play Pakistan in a Twenty20 match on Sunday. He was man of the tournament when England won the World Twenty20 this year, and these things mean a lot to Pietersen.

Now he has been dropped and it isn’t a f*** up. It is a piece of deliberate policy. He has been singled out. He’d like that part of it. Others had an indifferent series with the bat against Pakistan and have been retained. In fact, being retained is the most obvious policy of the present England set-up. So much so that not retaining Pietersen is a very powerful statement.

Pietersen’s instantaneous and ill-advised lament on Twitter was the real f*** up, but it demonstrated the depth of his dismay. Ayrton Senna was a once rebuked for some minor infraction of the racing drivers’ code. His response was not so much arrogance as bewilderment: “But I’m Ayrton Senna.” Pietersen has the same sense of self.

Eric Cantona was the Kevin Pietersen of football. He turned up his collar to show he was different. He had a special walk. He came to Manchester United with a history of disrupting every team that he had belonged to, but at United he found his home. His perversities and arrogance were exactly what the club needed. Cantona made them feel different, made them feel worthy, made them feel entitled. Pietersen has been a central part of a similar process with England to a point where they can beat any team in the world.