It came with the game and series on the line. At lunch on the fifth day England were five wickets down and leading by just 136 runs, with Australia hopeful of running through the rest of the line-up and chasing down a small total to level the series.

In their way stood Pietersen, who had unconvincingly withstood a pre-break barrage and been dropped twice. He responded in a manner which would become familiar, taking the attack to Australia with devastating effect and taking the game out of reach. The rest, warts’n’all, is history, but what would have happened had one of the two catches been taken, and Australia retained the Ashes as a result? Could Pietersen’s career had been over when it had barely begun.

“I remember thinking KP’s actually done better than that, but he’s got to make a big score at The Oval, and luckily enough you made one of the all-time great hundreds to help England win [the series]. I thought if you got nothing at The Oval, if Gilly had caught you or I had caught you, they might have said ‘Jeez I’m not sure about Kevin Pietersen’, but luckily enough you made that hundred and went on to make some unbelievable hundreds for England.”