Kevin Pietersen heads off to play for St Lucia Zouks in the Caribbean Premier League shortly but not before stepping in to make one final appearance for Surrey in their NatWest T20 Blast fixture with Sussex on Sunday.
The jet-setting batsman could bump into his former England team-mate Matt Prior, who will be in attendance at Arundel as a spectator following the announcement of his retirement.
While Prior was one of the main targets in Pietersen’s incendiary autobiography published in October – when he lampooned the wicketkeeper’s “Big Cheese” nickname and made accusations of dressing room bullying – the pair exchanged pleasantries on social media this week.
Alec Stewart, who is Pietersen’s director of cricket at Surrey and was a close confidant of Prior during his career, believes the day will come when the pair set their differences aside and find common ground in their shared success for the national side. Stewart told Test Match Special: “I’d hope that in a year, two years or whatever it might be they can shake hands, have a cheese sandwich and get on with life as it should be between two former team-mates.”
Surrey remain optimistic that Pietersen will return to play for them when his CPL commitments end next month and help power their promotion drive into Division One of the County Championship, despite seeing his hopes of a Test recall ended by Andrew Strauss, the director of England cricket, last month.
Having originally re-signed for the club for four-day cricket at the start of the season, the 34-year-old has agreed to play Sunday’s Twenty20 fixture as a one-off as Surrey will be without Jason Roy and Kumar Sangakkara.
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