Kevin Pietersen may not see it this way right now, but he may one day be thankful the selectors put him out of his misery. And that day may come very soon – as early, perhaps, as November 25 and the first day of the Ashes.

Being dropped may feel like a slap in the face, especially – as Pietersen tweeted, accidentally or otherwise – when you were recently named the best player of a global tournament. But reputations in international sport can be compromised more easily than they are made. And Pietersen’s form since he made merry in the Caribbean has not merely threatened brand KP: it has proved a luxury in England’s middle order.

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Kevin Pietersen rarely conceals his emotions.

It was his impulsive decision making that first brought him to the UK, and those adrenalized assaults on South African and Australian attacks that earned him his reputation.

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The fourth Test starting at Lord’s tomorrow has become the grandstand finale this strange summer hardly deserves. A week ago the talk was of a whitewash, accompanied by the complacent lament that this was no sort of preparation for the Ashes. Now, England feel like an hour of doosras and reverse-swing away from surrendering a 2-0 lead against the side ranked a distant sixth in the world. It’s precisely the kind of frisson Andy Flower may reflect he could have done without.

Because make no mistake: the situation has changed. Not only are England suddenly fighting for their pre-Brisbane credibility (and they really are: 233 and 222 on a decent Brit Oval track hinted at frailties we all hoped had disappeared), but they are still scratching their heads over how best to fit seven batsmen into six.

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What was that at Edgbaston? Some Pakistani resolve? Zulqarnain Haider, forgiven a king pair by technology, taunting the English bowlers by showing them his stumps before covering up like a crab, then launching them over their heads and almost smiling as he did so. Saeed Ajmal, taking body blows to score his maiden fifty and make England fret.

Did you see the way Ajmal turned to the dressing room and pumped his fists? Did you see, when Ajmal’s innings did come to an end, Haider halting his partner’s return to the pavilion to shake his hand? Pakistan were never likely to come back into the Test, but that plain show of resistance – and unity – may yet salvage this one-sided series.

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When I first started reading about cricket, I got it into my head that the England selectors were a malicious troop of macaques with a bottomless supply of throwing spanners. That was a long time ago; things change; and these days they’re lauded by pretty much everyone.

This is all the more astonishing when you consider the job’s tougher than the two-for-a-fiver steaks at one of those chain pubs with the plastic placemats/menus. Everyone’s got a favourite player and everyone’s got a few limp statistics to slap you with. Consensus is impossible.

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There was a revealing moment at Edgbaston on Sunday, when the entire England team went up for a caught-behind appeal against Azhar Ali in the second over of the day. The bowler, Stuart Broad, didn’t bother turning round – but that was not the weird bit. No, what happened next said much for one of the less-intended consequence of the Umpire Decision Review System: honesty, a notion often dismissed as naive in international sport, may be poking its head above the parapet once more.

These are early days, of course, and the players’ competitive juices will always flow in directions that upset the purists. But England’s failure to challenge the not-out decision (and it was definitely not out) shifted the spotlight on to them. Why, went the faintly disapproving logic, did they appeal so vociferously first time round, only to lose the courage of their convictions when faced with the prospect of technology?

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ESPN Classic specialises in old gold – Muhammad Ali, Toshack and Keegan, Botham’s Ashes and Botham’s mullet all perfectly preserved – the YouTube of a more patient generation. Occasionally the time machine sets a more leisurely course, and we are transported only as far as say, 2006, and the last time England played Pakistan.

It was a heady summer, 2006. The UK was enjoying it’s warmest holiday in 350 years, Justin Timberlake was bringing sexy back and, not for the last time, England’s cricketers were trying to repair a national ego bruised by a poor football World Cup campaign.

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They say that batsmen make their own luck, but either Kevin Pietersen’s working double shifts or he’s subcontracting.

Pietersen’s first innings 80 was a sublime blend of fortune and slapstick dotted with the occasional fantastic boundary. It was very, very entertaining. However, the conventional wisdom that a batsman will find form and confidence from time in the middle would seem not to apply here.

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Several years ago I was having a drink with a member of the coaching staff on an England tour – though not a senior England tour – and he came out with an observation that stuck with me. ‘The thing with these Asian kids,’ he said, ‘is that they don’t always want to put the hard yards in.’

It was a gobsmacking assertion. And whenever another young Anglo-Asian cricketer fails to fulfil his promise or falls foul of the authorities, I’m reminded of that implicit sense of a racial ‘them and us’: the white Anglo-Saxon hegemony ranged silently but perceptibly against the so-called outsiders, striving for acceptance.

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Australia’s batsmen have become boring. Did anyone see that coming? Cricket’s great entertainers have become its bar-fillers, like Rage Against the Machine getting haircuts and covering Bryan Adams.

As such, it’s up to England’s batters to provide the entertainment in the Ashes, or staying up through the night will become less and less attractive.

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