Warne paints different picture for Pietersen

Kevin Pietersen should expect a "whole different ballgame" if he plays against Australia, according to Shane Warne, his Hampshire captain and close friend. Warne said Pietersen, who should be a certainty for the two one-day series before the Ashes, was "a real find", but he would face a tougher test from Australia.

"While it was fantastic what he did in South Africa, it will be a whole different ball game this summer for him," Warne said in the Herald Sun. "People will be expecting even more fireworks. There's also the little matter of playing against us Australians. We don't intend to let him make those headlines."

Pietersen hit three one-day centuries in South Africa and will play for England in the Twenty20 match against Australia at the Rose Bowl on Monday. However, he will have to wait for a maiden Test call-up if he is to face Warne, who has retired from one-day internationals.

Warne will unveil a portrait of himself at Lord's tomorrow and the painting will hang alongside Don Bradman and Keith Miller in the pavilion. The oil-on-linen work, which took artist Fanny Rush ten months to complete, was commissioned by MCC to keep the collection fresh.

"The contribution to cricket made by Shane Warne has been immense, and it is only right that he should be represented," Lord Fellowes, the chairman of the MCC Arts and Library Sub-Committee, said. "I am sure that this portrait will be much admired during the coming Ashes series, and in the future."

Rush said she knew how to portray Warne the moment she heard about the commission. "I knew his reputation as a fearsome bowler, and I envisaged him in the portrait as if seen from a batsman's point of view, bearing down formidably and with supreme confidence," she said. "Over the months that it took to complete the painting, I got to know him as a person, too. He is a delightful man, and I feel that I have also caught this aspect of him in the portrait."