I have defended him when others have criticised him. Yet something has changed this year.

ike Kevin Pietersen. Take as you find, I've always thought, and Kevin has always been a most polite, well-mannered and well-brought-up person. I have felt privileged to have watched a rare talent over the past five years and have enjoyed dealing with him as a media man.

Dropped: KP was axed from the England squad on Tuesday

Dropped: KP was axed from the England squad on Tuesday

I have defended him when others have criticised him. Yet something has changed this year. He has been, as Nasser Hussain said on these pages yesterday, a man apart. He has always been more popular in the dressing room than common perception would suggest but this year he has seemed detached.

He has been wary of doing press conferences, has felt that his honesty and openness have counted against him and, most importantly, has lost that spark on the field that made him such a special batsman.

Whether he regains it now, after being dropped by England for the first time, is the crucial question. But we must not be surprised if we never again see the outrageous shots and sheer self-belief that have characterised his game ever since that Ashes-winning hundred at The Oval in 2005.

Three big things have made KP different now. The loss of the England captaincy hurt him more than has been acknowledged and it clearly has been eating away at him that Andrew Strauss has had the working environment he craved when he told his employers that England would never fulfil their potential with Peter Moores as coach.

Then the achilles injury which struck last year proved far more serious than any of us imagined, and Pietersen's sense of disillusionment was increased by what he considered poor medical treatment.

Finally, and most significantly, he has become a father and has become so enveloped in family life that his hunger for cricketing achievement has taken second place in his list of priorities.

If Kevin Pietersen does not become a great, if he does not go on to make 10,000 Test runs, it does not mean that he has failed. But it would be a great shame for those of us who thought we were seeing cricketing history in the making while watching him.