Andrew Strauss tells us that the South African origins of himself, Kevin Pietersen, Matt Prior and Jonathan Trott are “a non-issue” for England’s cricketers. Which is fair enough, but you can bet your last rand that they won’t be treated as a non-issue by the during the forthcoming series of five one-day internationals and four Test matches. If the South Africa captain, Graeme Smith, doesn’t encourage his men to target these perceived turncoats in the England team, then he’s not the chest-thumping patriot I took him to be. And even if he doesn’t – for he does seem to be mellowing somewhat – the home supporters in Durban and Johannesburg will most certainly let the abuse fly at those biltong-flavoured Englishmen, reserving particular vehemence for Pietersen, who is scheduled to join the party next week.

That prospect won’t trouble Pietersen in the slightest, of course. He got fearful stick when he first played one-day cricket with England in South Africa, to which he responded, after scoring his first international century (108 not out from 96 balls at Bloemfontein), by not so much kissing the three lions on his helmet, as snogging them. He finished as Player of the Series, some achievement given that the South Africans had won 4-1. And now he is five years older and wiser, witness the disappearance of that preposterous white stripe from his hair. It has been replaced, moreover, by an eminently sensible Brylcreem bounce, which augurs well, because the last Brylcreem Boy to play cricket in South Africa, in 1948-49, scored what remains the fastest triple century in first-class cricket. Playing for MCC against North-Eastern Transvaal, Denis Compton took one minute over three hours to reach his 300, hitting five sixes and 42 fours. He completed the last third of it in just 37 minutes.

Strictly speaking, Compton didn’t become the first official Brylcreem Boy until 1950, but we won’t let trifling details interfere with the parallels between the man they called Compo and the man they call KP. I was gratified, when I interviewed Pietersen a few weeks ago, to find that he had done his homework on Compton. “I know he was a pretty flamboyant batter, a chinaman bowler, a pretty cool guy,” he said. Cooler, in fact, than Pietersen knew. He’d done some of his homework but not all of it, and had no idea that his Brylcreemed predecessor also played for Read more…

Administrator England Andrew Strauss, Blogs.CMDN.com, Brylcreem, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Denis Compton, England, Graeme Smith, Jonathan Trott, Kevin Pietersen, KP, Matt Prior, MCC, South Africa