WITH HIS constantly changing hair-dos, tattoo-emblazoned arms and pop-star wife, Kevin Pietersen was never the most likely successor to such England captains as Lord Hawke, Douglas Jardine, Len Hutton and Mike Brearley.

Last night, after only a handful of months in the job and barely three years since his runs helped England to a euphoric Ashes victory, he relinquished the job, finding himself without support among the players after delivering an ultimatum to his employers over his desire to replace the team's head coach.

At the end of a long day of conflicting rumour and speculation, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) called a press conference at which the removal of the coach, Peter Moores, was also announced.

Pietersen will remain as a batsman but, with the squad due to leave for the West Indies in a fortnight and another Ashes series starting six months from today, England are faced with rebuilding under a new captain, Andrew Strauss, and a new head coach, yet to be identified.

Not since Tony Greig cast his lot with Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket in the spring of 1977 has an England captain been forced to leave the job in such dramatic circumstances. Both men were born and raised as South Africans, leaving their native land for the country of one parent - a father in Greig's case, a mother in Pietersen's - to pursue a career in cricket unfettered by the consequences of apartheid.

Whereas Greig was removed for having secretly recruited players to the Packer circus, Pietersen can at least claim to have relinquished the captaincy over a matter of cricketing principle.

Strauss, incidentally, was born in Johannesburg but moved to England at the age of six.

The true nature of the negotiations surrounding the end of Pietersen's tenure remains opaque. Half an hour before the ECB's press conference, and shortly before boarding a plane to bring him back from a safari break in South Africa, he issued a statement in which he claimed he "did not resign but had decided to stand down with immediate effect".

It was his unorthodox and often enthralling batting, full of an unreflective aggression normally alien to players nurtured in the English game, that made Pietersen such a vital part of a team often mired in caution and uncertainty. Great batsmanship, however, does not necessarily translate into effective captaincy.

Born 28 years ago in Natal to an Afrikaner father and Kentish mother, he never make a secret of the ambition that led him to reject the South Africa government's insistence on racial quotas in their teams during the post-apartheid era.

His appointment as England's captain last year, in succession to his friend Michael Vaughan, was generally welcomed. But his liking for getting his way led him into conflict with authority during his early years in English county cricket, and yesterday's events were provoked by his failure to persuade the selectors and head coach to restore Vaughan to the squad for the coming tour.

Pietersen has never gone out of his way to avoid attention. Last year he forced the MCC to consider revising the games's ancient laws when he switched from his normal right-handed stance to a left-handed one just as a New Zealand bowler was about to deliver the ball, and despatched the ball for a gigantic six.

He made his Test debut in the first of the 2005 Ashes Tests, scoring a match-winning century in the second innings of the final match. When the tables were turned 18 months later, and England endured a 5-0 whitewash in Australia, he was almost the team's only effective performer.

The demise of England captains is often shrouded in mystery, but Pietersen is unusual in that a run of poor performances by the team has little to do with it, even though England lost a one-day series in India before the Mumbai attacks in November and a two-match Test series on their return to help a nation of cricket fans take their minds off the tragedy.

Divisions within the squad were implicit in the brief statement given last night by Hugh Morris, the managing director of English cricket. His mention of a mutual recognition that "in the present situation it was impossible to restore the dressingroom unity" hinted strongly at dark undercurrents which have yet to emerge.

It's all a world away from the day when the fountains of Trafalgar ran with champagne.

Guardian Service