KP show lands in the BBL

England’s cricket marketers understood the drawing power Kevin Pietersen possesses well before he had scored a Test century.

Even prior to him pulling on a Test cap, in fact.

In the countdown to the long-awaited 2005 Ashes series in the United Kingdom, Pietersen was paraded as the fresh face – and the distinctive ‘skunk-style’ hairdo – of the home team’s campaign to enlist support and belief for their efforts to wrest back the urn for the first time in more than a decade.

Quick Single: Stars secure Pietersen for BBL|04

To launch their ‘Big Summer’, the England and Wales Cricket Board set up a makeshift practice pitch alongside the River Thames just beneath the impassive gaze of the London Eye, and trumpeted Pietersen’s attempt to belt a ball over the water to the distant north bank.

The fact that the 111 metres his best hit flew barely accounted for midstream was overshadowed by the excitement surrounding the South African-born batsman’s arrival on the Test scene, and was rendered utterly irrelevant after the final Test three months later when England secured the Ashes.

A result delivered on the back of Pietersen’s audacious 158 at The Oval when – in just the fifth Test of his career and against an attack starring Glenn McGrath, Brett Lee and Shane Warne – he clubbed seven sixes to break Sir Ian Botham’s record of the most by an England batsman in an Ashes Test.

Pietersen finished his maiden Test series with a man of the match gong, the kudos of being its leading runs-scorer, an MBE, a place in history and the tag of the most compelling England cricketer since Botham left the international stage in 1992.

And while he has dominated headlines as readily as opposition bowling attacks in the nine years since he announced himself to the world, Pietersen has always remained a by-word for entertainment.

As Simon Wilde, cricket writer for the Sunday Times noted in his recently released book entitled simply ‘On Pietersen’: "For anyone whose job it was to report on the England cricket team, Kevin Pietersen was the gift that just kept on giving."

That’s what KFC T20 Big Bash League fans in Australia will see first-hand when the swaggering, sublimely talented 34-year-old bat-for-hire turns out with the Melbourne Stars for the next two years.

Given his affinity for the spotlight and his disdain for orthodoxy, Pietersen looms as potentially the biggest drawcard of BBL|04.

After all, it takes a rare hybrid of talent and self-belief to decide, barely a dozen matches into a Test career, to execute a reverse sweep under the world’s scrutiny with such intent that it sails into the Edgbaston crowd beyond the boundary at deep backward point.

Not just against any old parklands trundler, mind you.

That was the indignity he heaped upon Sri Lanka’s Muthiah Muralidaran, the most successful bowler Test cricket is likely to see.

And not that Murali was the only one.

In a one-day international against New Zealand a couple of years later, Pietersen not only switch hit a reverse sweep over the leg side boundary off Scott Styris’ bowling, he also made such sweet contact to another that it sailed beyond the fence at long-off.

Or long-on, as it would have been if he was born to bat left-handed.

That innings prompted the Marylebone Cricket Club, guardians of cricket’s closely protected laws, to examine whether the switch hit was legal and – for one of the few times in his career – the establishment came down firmly on Pietersen’s side.

Despite compiling his highest Test score (227) at the Adelaide Oval during the 2010-11 Ashes summer to follow the 158 he had scored at the same ground four years earlier, crowds in other Australian cities have been deprived the sight of Pietersen in imperious full flight.

That will change during BBL|04 when the full repertoire of a batsman now destined to play out his career as a roving Twenty20 specialist will be regularly and regally on display.

The trademark, carefree flick of the back leg as he lifts the ball back, a long way back, over a bowler’s head.

The intimidating lurch forward that enables him to not so much stroke as scare full deliveries scuttling through the covers.

And the sheer brutality he inflicts on short-pitched bowling that is muscled to the leg-side fence with all the disdain of a nightclub bouncer throwing a headlock on an annoying punter.

Like Muralidaran before him, Pietersen seems destined to win scores of fresh fans as he brings his precious gifts to the biggest summer of cricket Australia has seen. And the one after that.

And love him or loathe him, as was the case when he appeared on the south bank of the Thames with much more hair and far fewer tattoos and milestones, he will ensure he is always a star of the show.