Ground force
A flamboyant extrovert with bucketfuls of confidence, Hampshire and England star batsman Kevin Pietersen is used to making the headlines. He tells Rebecca Gooch how marriage has mellowed him, but says his will to succeed is stronger than ever
Kevin Pietersen’s chunky diamond ring glistens as he describes what he was up to last week. “I flew an Airbus around for three hours, which was amazing,” he grins. “The captain said: ‘You’re a natural’.”
Piloting a 555-seat, 460-ton plane is quite an achievement for a 28-year-old cricketer, but then he is the Hampshire County Cricket Club and England superhero. Okay, it was actually a British Airways simulator he was flying, but with his track record of cool determination and achievement—“He would walk through a brick wall to get what he wanted,” says his mum—flying the real thing isn’t beyond the realms of possibility. He would like to get a pilot’s licence one day, but for now he’s concentrating on being one of the most exciting batsmen in the world.
Luckily he has found a rare window in his diary for me. It’s the day after he has visited The Rose Bowl, near Southampton, the home of Hampshire CCC, the club to which he has signed up to play for another three years. Like its star player, the club has great plans for the future. Its £48 million expansion programme, which starts in September, will see The Rose Bowl increase its capacity from 20,000 to a possible 25,000 for major fixtures, and able to host its first Test match in 2011.
“The plans look great, but it’s how nice the people are and how well the place is run that made my decision to play for Hampshire easy,” he says. “It’s the people who are around you that matter, who make you feel welcome, who comfort you, who build you up, who keep your feet grounded. And my relationship with the people at The Rose Bowl is magnificent.”
It’s a surprise to hear someone not known for his lack of self-belief talk about his appreciation for being boosted, comforted and welcomed. Even Kevin’s close friend and former Hampshire teammate Shane Warne’s first impression of him was: “Who the hell is this cocky little upstart?” But it’s more than the now extinct “skunk” hairdo that has changed with Kevin. A slump in form at the Test series in New Zealand in March gave him a taste of his biggest dread: failure. It’s an experience most cricket pros said would paradoxically be the making of him. More importantly, last year he married former Liberty X singer Jessica Taylor.
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