The fastest bat

The holy grail of batting used to be consistency - the ability to make strings of high scores. It's still much prized, but it's no longer the chief aspiration of the most accomplished players. For the past five years, since Steve Waugh put a rocket up the backside of the whole game, the holy grail has been consistency at speed: the ability not just to build an innings, but to demolish an attack.

The most conspicuous examples of this have been Adam Gilchrist and Andrew Flintoff, both of whom have somehow managed to go through patches of sustained purple, so that they looked like Superman out on the field and Ken Barrington in the scorebook. But they both have other jobs to do, which puts them in a long tradition of demolition men from Ian Botham and Kapil Dev to Chris Cairns and Lance Klusener. Shahid Afridi and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, electrifying as they are, fit into this category too. It's different attempting mayhem as a specialist batsman. Which is why we may now be talking about a revolution.

In Test history, only three specialist batsmen have managed to score very fast for long. Among those with a thousand runs, the only ones to rattle along at more than 70 runs per hundred balls are Clem Hill, Virender Sehwag and Kevin Pietersen. Mr Hill we can salute and then politely dismiss, as he played (for Australia) a hundred years ago, when the game was a million miles from what it is now. No doubt he was a great entertainer, but he played against only two teams (England and South Africa, the Bangladesh of his day), and his strike rate of just under 75 is no more than an estimate, because Edwardian scorers were more interested in minutes than balls.

So, of all the batsmen to have come along since World War I, the most electric have been Sehwag, with a strike rate of 74, and Pietersen, with 70. They out-blast the master blaster himself, Viv Richards (69); they trump even Victor Trumper (also 69). Sehwag played his first Test in November 2001, Pietersen less than a year ago. They are new kids with not much of the block about them.

Pietersen has made hundreds in his last three home Tests and all of them have been special. His 158 at The Oval last year got going with a brutal assault on Brett Lee and included a fair amount of toying with Shane Warne. Coming when England needed only to bat out two sessions, it was perhaps the most extreme example ever of using attack as the best form of defence.

His 158 at Lord's last month showed that he had more or less mastered Murali. His 142 at Edgbaston confirmed it. The conditions there were such that a batsman was never totally in: one player after another got out after facing 50 or 60 balls for 20 or 30 runs. Pietersen scored twice as fast as anyone else, yet also stayed in for twice as long. Nobody on either side scored more than five fours in their first innings - except Pietersen, who scored 20, plus three sixes. It was famously said of the New Zealanders of the 1980s that it was like facing the World XI at one end and Ilford 2nds at the other. For the Sri Lankans, it was like bowling to the World XI at one end and Sinhalese Sports Club 2nds at the other.

Batting in England in early May isn't supposed to be easy. In this series, nobody has a strike rate above 56 - except Pietersen, who is on 80. The way Flintoff was playing in 2003 and 2004, some England fans imagined they would never see again. They already have, only more so.

Fast batting is a brilliant thing, not just to watch but to have in your team. It throws opponents and lifts team mates, especially the bowlers, who get more time to do their job. But fast batting isn't quite the same as great batting. Along with all the justified acclaim for Pietersen, there has been some overpraise. It's too early to liken him to Lara or Tendulkar or Ponting or Dravid. No way is he the best batsman in the world yet: on that, the LG Rankings, which have him just entering the top ten, have been wiser than some of the pundits. The true parallel is with Sehwag, who shares Pietersen's audacity, his astounding eye, his disrespect for the coaching manual and ability to hit a blameless ball for four.

His finest hours have needed some luck. He was famously dropped on 15 by Warne on the way to the first 158. He was caught off a no-ball and given not out to a plumb lbw shout on his way to the second. Early in the 142, he was playing and missing at Chaminda Vaas. Which is fine. He is a dasher, born to live dangerously. The risks he takes are part of the deal.

Following his reverse sweep for six off Murali, there was an outbreak of stuffiness in certain sections of the press box. One usually shrewd correspondent accused Pietersen of "crowd-pleasing frivolity", which is the sort of thing cricket writers used to chunter about in 1966, while the rest of western culture was learning to loosen up. Pleasing the crowd! Whatever next?

The reverse sweep was a moment of dazzling inspiration that will be remembered for a long time. It was not to blame for the fact that Pietersen got out next ball - the problem there was a normal sweep, played to a good doosra from Murali. Nor was the reverse sweep responsible for the fact that Flintoff (a much better captain in this match) was immediately bowled by Lasith Malinga, or for the limp pull shot from Liam Plunkett, or the sloppy top edge from Geraint Jones.

Only in England could a way be found to blame a collapse on the man who scored four times as many runs as anyone else. Overhyped on the one hand, wrongly blamed on the other, Pietersen won't mind - he just loves attention. And even a man as brazenly confident as he is will know that a bad patch will come along some time. As it has for Sehwag.