SK Flashback: The greatest Ashes and the greatest cricket video games - Part 2

#10 The perfect end for Pietersen

Oval saw the coronation of the new prince of English cricket

Australia had conceded a narrow 6 run first innings lead. A combination of bad light and rain had cut a sizeable chunk from the play as the Englishmen took guard for their second innings. Australia needed wickets, and they needed them quick. England is 67-3 as Kevin Pietersen takes guard against McGrath's hat-trick ball. Though he has been the summer's revelation for England, a hundred has eluded Pietersen all the while. The task is to score 150 runs with him without running any batsman out. This modicum of a task is the most difficult that the game can get, which is nothing in comparison with the analogous task in the Aussie saga.

What actually happened: Warne and McGrath bowled with a vengeance as they got half of the resistance folded up with 126 on board at lunch. In fact, even Pietersen had to survive a hostile display of pace bowling by the Lee-McGrath duo in which Warne dropped a sitter off the former. On a retrospection, Warne might have dropped Australia's last chance to hold on to the urn. A visibly distraught KP is said to have asked his captain about how to go ahead in batting. "Your way", said Vaughan, and the rest, they say, is history. The post-lunch session revealed a different Pietersen as he pummel-whacked the Aussie bowlers around the Oval. He dealt in boundaries as the target began to drift away from Australia. Though he did not get any support barring Ashley Giles, by the time he was done, he had ensured that the Ashes could go only one way.