It might not have changed the game, but how different would Pietersen's reputation look had he succumbed to his nervy first-ball charge against Doherty, or holed out to cover when the third delivery skewed off a leading edge? Even at Adelaide, during his Ashes 227, the appearance of the long-since-lampooned Xavier Doherty brought him out in an instant rash.
These days the hunter has become the hunted, by one breed of spinner above all others, and the nervous energy that used to translate into slash-and-burn performances has given way to nerves, pure and simple. It just so happens, however, that right now the reverse is true.
From his berserk introduction to Shane Warne in 2005, to arguably the apotheosis of his confrontational strokeplay on Sri Lanka's last tour a year later, when he first unfurled the switch hit against an incredulous Muttiah Muralitharan, he's attempted to impose his will on slow bowling of all shapes, sizes and reputation. That is his way, and he's never seen fit to change throughout his career. The only sort of brain surgery he'd ever seek to carry out is a frontal lobotomy, preferably on the spinner who dares to toss one up in his slot. Pietersen would not, could not, seek to emulate such a method - and nor would anyone wish him to try. Cold-blooded accumulation is Trott's watchword, and for 409 deliveries spanning eight-and-a-half hours, he drained his performance of all emotion, and set about Sri Lanka with the precision and patience of a brain surgeon. It was typical of Pietersen that, even on a day when he contributed less than 1% of England's total, he nevertheless deflected attention from a man whose second Test double-century, and fourth 150-plus score of the past 12 months, showcased none of the jitters that are so visible in his colleague's performances. The ball, in mitigation, kept a fraction low and required a review to send him on his way, but such was the tangle of limbs with which KP had repelled his previous four deliveries, such a scenario had never seemed far from the surface. Sri Lanka's left-arm spinner Rangana Herath had bowled 122 balls without reward when, in the 102nd over of the innings and his second since the arrival of Pietersen, he skidded one through from round the wicket, and pinned his man dead in front of middle. A solitary failure in a featureless contest hardly counts as evidence that his world is collapsing around him, but nevertheless, he knows, as we know, that already sceptical tongues are now wagging ten-fold. In print if not in deed, Pietersen launched the 2011 summer with an onslaught of ambition, as he sought to draw a line under the events of an eventful winter, and reassert his credentials as one of the greatest England batsmen of his age.
And Kevin Pietersen still succumbs to left-arm spinners with a regularity that no-one can write off as a coincidence. Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott still bat with the rigidity of guardsmen at the Royal Wedding Ian Bell still exudes the air of a man whose repertoire is wasted at No. England's cricketers may have embarked on a new four-year cycle of international commitments, but on the batting front at least, certain facets of their play have scarcely changed since the end of 2010.
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