KP the new Pom hope

Every sport has been fueled by a classic rivalry. 2 teams who revel in the very enormity of the moment when they love to step up their game and would rather die than lose to their sworn rival. These rivalries also provide for some very entertaining viewing for the sport lovers and lets the media have a field day in building up the hype before such classic confrontations. Every game has such a rivalry be it Man U vs Arsenal/Man City in soccer, Sampras vs Agassi or McEnroe vs Connors, New zealand vs Australia in rugby, Red Sox vs Yankees in baseball, India vs Pakistan or England vs Australia (as the English media would love the world to believe) in cricket. It takes a lot out of the players to play in pressure cooker like atmosphere like encounters and only the best step up in such situation to stand out at the men amongst the boys. This years Ashes has been getting some good pre launch hype thanks to some consistent and gritty performances by the English team over the past two years under an aggressive and very un-english brand of captaincy of Michael Vaughan. While the Aussie team has remained the same over the past half a decade (they will actually be fielding an unchanged bowling attack from the 97 Ashes series) the Poms have had 3 players who have been under the media scanner. Tall and gangly Harmison is supposed to have that extra pace and extra bounce to make the Aussie hopping around on the English soil, big laddie Freddie is supposed to fill in the all rounders shoes while doing the bulk of bowling while doubling up as an explosive lower order bat and last but not the least KP is expected to deliver the goods in the one day format with his ballistic approach to batting with talk of him getting an Ashes callup getting stronger by the day. Now KP or Kevin Pietrson is the latest import for the Poms squad which is always bristling with players from all around the world case in point being Vikram Solanki, Min Patel, Kabir Ali etc. He switched over from South Africa pissed off by the selection policies over there deciding he wanted to play for the English team colors. Ironically his second series he was playing against his country of birth. He received widespread admonishment and lack o support from the crowd in South Africa but he came out the series with flying colors ending up as the man of the series all along being booed by a partisan crowd. He has proven himself to be a big match player and the bigger the occasion the greater he has shown his ability to propel himself for it. He had no bigger occasion than when he was playing the Aussies (still smarting from a thrashing by a lowly Bangladesh sorry cudnt resist from putting that in) firmly in control of a match by first scoring 250 odd and then having the Poms tottering at 6/160. It was then that he decided to step up a gear and blast the Aussie bowlers into oblivion with an unbeleivable and morale shattering display of batsmanship. He currently sports a 'statistically unbelievable' and 'r u kidding me' avg of 160 in one dayers. He has shown himself as a big match player and whether he shall step up to one of the truly greats of the cricketing world shall only be determined in time but if his innings was any indication the Aussies are in for a hard time in this English summer. Btw check out Paul Colingwood's catch from the same match (pretty good I admit but hardly to be billed as the Catch of the Century).