Cricket Betting: Credit Pietersen for his conduct this week

England Cricket / Ralph Ellis / 05 December 2008 / Leave a Comment

Despite the one day series capitulation against India, the England captain remains a leader of promise. He has impressed Ralph Ellis with his handling of recent adversity but that doesn't mean we should expect England to prevail in India.

Momentum is massive. It's all to do with that confidence thing again. You get on a roll and bulldoze everything in your path. Whatever goes wrong is just a minor irritation, whatever goes right seems to happen without really trying.

The trouble is that when the momentum goes into reverse, getting back on target is like trying to turn round an oil tanker - and one that's fully laden at that. And that's the problem facing Kevin Pietersen at the moment as England's team arrive in Abu Dhabi for their 'holding camp' in advance of the Test series in India that may or may not yet happen.

Pietersen showed himself to be a leader of promise last summer when he galvanised a team that had been soundly thrashed by South Africa and won not only the dead game of the Test series but the One Day series that followed. And the way he's conducted himself this week brings only credit to him again.

With a group of players understandably reluctant to go back to India after the horrors they saw on their hotel televisions, England's captain has managed to get them into an 'all for one and one for all' mentality. The likes of Steve Harmison, Andrew Flintoff and James Anderson who had their own reasons to be even more wary about returning to the sub-Continent are all on the plane to the Middle East. And once they are in Abu Dhabi either the whole squad will move on to play the Tests or nobody at all. "I'm confident we'll get 15 lads to play a Test match next week. There is a collective mood," says the England captain in this morning's papers.

But for all that achievement there's a sense that Pietersen is now having to fight events rather than dominate them. There was the fiasco of the Stanford series, the way bad light ruined the slim chance his team had of winning at least one of the One Day Internationals in India, and now the politics surrounding the Test series.

It's all destroying what was supposed to be a winter of steady progress towards next summer's Ashes series, and whatever happens between now and Christmas it's impossible to see where the long term plan can be put right. The return of Monty Panesar to the ranks will be a help - just why do we leave a world class bowler out of the One Day side? But even that can't really turn the tide of events, can it?

India are [1.82] to win the first Test if it goes ahead and it's hard to see any other result. These days there is little enough preparation for a touring side before the big games start - to go into this arena with no proper match practice at all is a recipe for a heavy defeat. And then sadly it's time to get on Australia at [1.87] to win the Ashes next summer too.

Five things you might not know about Abu Dhabi

1. The capital and second biggest city after Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, it's name translated literally is "Father of Gazelle"

2. England's cricketers aren't guaranteed sunny skies while they wait to decide about going to India. The region often suffers thick fog at this time of year

3. Abu Dhabi city sits on an island less than 250 metres from the mainland, connected by two bridges. A third bridge should be built by 2011

4. The city was planned in the 1970s to hold a maximum population of 600,000. Some 860,000 live there now

5. The average net worth for Abu Dhabi's 420,000 citizens is more than ten million pounds