Pietersen and Greig

Kevin Pietersen reminds me of the young Tony Greig. They're both South Africans who switched countries as young adults to become stars in the English game. Talented cricketers with a flair for finding the limelight that amounted to genius, they managed to persuade an English cricketing public hungry for greatness — England hasn't produced a great batsman in forty years — that they were the real thing.

They had a genuine claim to being innovators: Tony Greig pioneered a fielding position, silly point, and a remarkable new shot, the upper cuff (where the batsman deliberately helps the ball over the slips) against that demonic fast-bowling firm: Thomson & Lillee. Pietersen's on-side play is original, specially his stork shot, where, one-legged on his front foot, he smacks the ball hard through midwicket.

As a spectator, though, I found the way Greig played to the gallery irritating and I find Pietersen's narcissism tiresome. Fans willingly indulge genius: I was happy, for example, to watch Shane Warne act out his little turns, ball after ball — the pantomime anguish, the chin-in-hand Thinker — because he was the best bowler in the world and his antics seemed part of the riyaz, the routines, of greatness. With Greig and Pietersen (good players, not great ones) the look-at-me mannerisms came across as a huckster's props; there was always the nagging feeling that their onfield swagger was a bluff waiting to be called.

They even made the same motor-mouth mistakes against the world's best sides. Greig promised to make Vivian Richards's West Indians grovel and Pietersen, before the Twenty20 game against Australia, spoke of the opportunity of 'humiliating' Ricky Ponting's team. England was pulverised on both occasions, though the formats were different: Test and Twenty20, tragedy and farce.