From a very small survey of people I have spoken to my belief was upheld that before his 158 at the Oval Kevin Pietersen had not made his mark in this series. Luke has said below that he was one of England's disappointments and I wrongly [corrected later] accused him of being under pressure in the batting line up.
But lo and behold he was the series' top scorer! He scored nearly 500 runs at an average of over 50.
So why did we all think he had failed to live up to his billing?
I think the issue was two fold, and you have to ignore the last innings at the Oval for this to stack. For one thing despite his volume runs he didn't really stick around too long, certainly no more than one session in nearly all his innings. He also scored half of his runs in the first two test. He failed at Old Trafford which was probably the most watched Test and of course was being generally rounded for his Teflon hands and lack of catching.
Without the Oval innings he would have scored the same runs as Vaughan so could not have been criticised out of hand but the bottom line is he did get the 158 and good luck to him. But conversely if Vaughan had not got the 166 his place would have been in question!!
Pietersen has to bat at 4 going forwards with Bell demoted to 5 until his form picks up.
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