Legends Month: The best of Kevin Pietersen

"What he did with his bat in this Test match was nothing short of genius."

This concise assessment of Kevin Pietersen’s innings at Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium in November 2012 was written by veteran English cricket scribe Scyld Berry immediately after he'd witnessed one of the modern era's greatest Test performances.

Reading it more than five years later, Berry's take still holds true, the use of the word 'genius' befitting a performance that, in the 2013 book Masterly Batting, was rated the fourth best innings in the history of the game.

Viewed in isolation, Pietersen's 186 in the second Test against India, a 233-ball innings of supreme batting on a wickedly turning pitch and in oppressive heat, deserves the genius tag.

But, like Pietersen's entire career, this innings must be viewed through the wider lens of his enigmatic and controversial time in international cricket.

The Kevin Pietersen who walked onto the Wankhede turf that day was a member of an England side that had been crushed by nine wickets in the first Test barely a week earlier.

He was a batsman who, in that Test in Ahmedabad, had twice fallen victim to his greatest weakness, left-arm orthodox spin, sparking furious commentary that it would be his downfall again and again in the series.

He was a man who had been cast out from the side altogether earlier in the year after a very public falling out with skipper Andrew Strauss during a home series against South Africa.

A man who had been offered the chance to 're-integrate' into the side under the leadership of new skipper Alastair Cook on the toughest of tours, a Test campaign in India.

It was against this turbulent backdrop that Pietersen, one of the best cricketers ever to play for England, produced his finest performance.

And from the first ball he faced that day, it was genius.

The right-hander's first scoring shot was a stroke normally reserved for batsmen who have already established their bearings, acclimatised to the heat and adjusted to the conditions; an assertive thrust forward to the pitch of a ball bowled by Harbhajan Singh and a vicious swipe of the bat, which sent it to the cover boundary.

It was a forewarning for India's bowlers as six of his first 10 scoring shots reached the boundary rope, strokes that came on all sides of the wicket as well.

He brought up his fifty in just 63 balls and went to stumps that day unbeaten on 62 with Cook, his unflappable new captain, not out on 87 after an unbroken century stand that had steered the match away from the path it took in Ahmedabad a week earlier.

And so it continued the following morning as the home side's spinners Ravichandran Ashwin, Harbhajan and Pragyan Ojha – Pietersen's left-arm nemesis from the first Test – were rendered ineffective in searing 40-degree heat by the double act of Pietersen the aggressor and Cook the defiant.

Cook, it must be acknowledged, produced an innings of real quality in this match as well. But the left-hander's stoicism was merely a sideshow to Pietersen's attacking flair.

Even the respective way the two batsmen reached three figures was almost a case of one-upmanship from Pietersen. Cook reached the milestone first via a textbook straight drive to the long off boundary from his 236th delivery. Pietersen, from just his 127th ball faced, brought up his century with a reverse sweep to the rope.

Cook eventually departed for 122, ending a 206-run stand – the highest third-wicket partnership ever in India by an English pair – that had brought the tourists to within 54 runs of the lead.

But Pietersen wasn't done.

As the wickets started to tumble, as everyone had expected them to all match, Pietersen put his foot down again and continued to find the fence despite the field being spread far and wide.

He twice swept against the spin and lofted Ojha over the boundary fielder and the midwicket fence, and then audaciously drove him on the up over cover for another six.

Ojha would eventually prove his undoing – again – but not after 20 boundaries, four sixes and more than five hours of batting that changed the match and a series that England would famously go on to win.

It was, as Berry said at the time, nothing short of genius.