Kevin Pietersen Hits Double Century(202*) against INDIA: "

Kevin Pietersen was not out on 202 when England declared.The consensus seems to be that Pietersen probably should have been given out when he tucked the ball down to Rahul Dravid, but we care more about what happened after that. He wasn’t given out and India had another 196 opportunities to dismiss him, but didn’t.

As many of you know, we never really accepted that Kevin Pietersen was in some dire run of form, but he still surprised us a bit with this innings. To go all Tour de France for the third time this week, he drifted along in the slipstream of Bell and Prior, conserving his energy in the mountainous morning and evening sessions. Then, when the England peloton approached the flat of an evening session featuring three fully-knackered frontline bowlers, he burst out and sprinted like Mark bloody Cavendish.

On Sky, they called Matt Prior the catalyst, which may well be true, but it’s worth keeping things in perspective. Kevin Pietersen scored three times as many runs as Prior.

As for England’s declaration, 474 really doesn’t seem like that many runs to us. We’d have been tempted to try and inflict some more wear and tear on the immense Praveen Kumar being as we’re at the start of an overly rapid four-Test series, but maybe we’re going too far with the long range planning with that. After all, the guy who wins the Tour de France will have done so by picking the right times to attack.