Cape Town will be the unlikely end of a tortuous winter journey for Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen when the two England heavyweights make their Indian Premier League debuts on April 18.

It would be surprising if the pair have not spent much of the past 12 months – since having to miss the inaugural IPL – daring to hope for a place in this year’s ultra-lucrative Twenty20 spectacular yet fearing a hitch throughout.

Still less likely, though, is that they imagined at any stage before late last month that they would be strutting their stuff in South Africa – or even, as seemed likeliest for a few short days, England – rather than India.

Hugely unfortunate circumstances well beyond the control of either player have conspired to force the IPL out of India.

While world events have beset cricket for much of the winter, Pietersen and Flintoff have had their own personal dramas to deal with too.

The eventual upshot is that – like fellow England regulars Paul Collingwood, Owais Shah and Ravi Bopara – they will have two weeks, up to May 1, to show the world what they can do for their big-money franchise employers.

The cut-off point for them, in a tournament set to come to the boil more than three weeks after their departure, is at the start of a week which sees the first of England’s two back-to-back home Tests against West Indies.

But the truth is that IPL needs Flintoff and Pietersen as it seeks to complete its global appeal, and is therefore happy to accommodate stage one of their two-year contracts in abbreviated form rather than not at all.

From the moment Dimitri Mascarenhas became English cricket’s only representative in last year’s IPL – and that as a bit-part player for Shane Warne’s surprise winners Rajasthan Royals – the brand could not afford to press on without at least one star attraction from one of its sport’s highest-profile nations.

Collingwood et al cannot quite claim the same level of mutual necessity but will doubtless be happy enough to be carried along for the ride, and handsomely rewarded for their presence.

The plan finally appears set to come together.

But Pietersen and Flintoff will not need reminding when they take the field a week on Saturday for Chennai Super Kings and Bangalore Royal Challengers respectively that it could all so easily not have happened.

Regardless of the terrorist atrocities which have so unsettled the sub-continent in recent months – and specifically cricket, in Mumbai last November and Lahore early in March – Pietersen and Flintoff have had difficulties closer to home.

Pietersen’s came first, of course, when he lost his position as England captain in all forms of the game as his employers sought a solution to his differences with coach Peter Moores.

Pietersen’s apparent driving force behind England’s return to India for the limited-overs leg of their tour – when the aftermath of Mumbai was still so raw – was identified by many, and similar roles were attributed to the likes of Flintoff.

It was nonetheless a moot point as to whether expediency, with IPL contracts still to be sealed, played its part too in the laudable resumption of the tour.

Whatever those imponderables, there is less room for doubt over Pietersen’s state of mind as he set out to cement his position all over again after Christmas as a mere foot-soldier under the captaincy of Andrew Strauss in the Caribbean.

The South Africa-born batsman nailed some unwanted headlines with his candid admission to being near the “end of his tether” towards the end of the West Indies trip.

Having failed to dominate for much of the tour, Pietersen still has work to do to re-establish his place in the top rung of the world elite. But there is no suggestion he is any less marketable than he was – and his high-profile, fortnight-long return to his native country is an obvious opportunity to underline those credentials again.

Flintoff’s winter blues have been less to do with form or demotion than the habitual scourge of injury.

For the sake of authenticity, his all-rounder billing could do with a few runs to complement his continued development as one of the world’s most feared and respected strike bowlers.

To date, though, that is a mere qualm set aside another outbreak of physical frailties for a sportsman who has had four operations on the left ankle which takes so much of his weight in the all important delivery stride.

The variation on a theme was a hip injury which saw Flintoff miss a pivotal part of the Caribbean tour – at around the same time as Pietersen was reportedly hankering for a short break at home with his ice-dancing, pop-singing wife.

They were episodes which reignited debate over the hectic summer schedule facing both players, and whether IPL should really be playing a part at all.

In the end, of course, the bottom line spoke; the England and Wales Cricket Board agreed a compromise ‘window’, and the stakes were raised again over Flintoff and Pietersen’s IPL involvement.
Source – uk.eurosport.yahoo.com