MUMBAI // When Kevin Pietersen leads England out for the first time in a Test match against the country of his birth at the Oval today, there is unlikely to be an outpouring of goodwill towards him back in South Africa.
Pietersen turned his back on his homeland in 2000, citing what he felt was a racist and unfair quota selection policy as his reason for leaving, and qualified for England instead.
The hate felt towards the Pietermaritzburg-born batsmen, who some perceived as a mercenary and a turncoat, may have subsided - but he is still regarded with ambivalence, at best, back in Africa.
"It won't be a big thing back home," claimed Shaun Pollock, the former Proteas captain-turned-commentator, who tried to talk Pietersen out of moving to England in 1999.
"We've more than accepted it and moved on from that state of mind. They'll understand he has gone."
Yet there are those in South Africa who are sympathetic to his cause. According to his former coach, Andrew Shedlock, Pietersen deserves all the success that has come his way since he packed his bags and left South Africa. "He made a choice - the correct one in my view," said Shedlock. "People often ask, 'If he had stayed in South Africa, would he have made it?'
"We will never know, but he has stuck to his choice and made it big. Who can deny what he has done?
"When you make a choice to play for another country, it is difficult. For him to succeed in England, over and above his ability he had to back himself.
"That is what Kevin is really good at. We can't deny where he has got to. He is unbelievable."
Shedlock was one of the few people to welcome Pietersen back, after he first rejected his homeland. He was a pariah and Shedlock recalls: "When Kevin used to come back from England, he wasn't too popular in South Africa at that stage.
"I was head coach of the Natal Academy, and Kevin would come and ask if I wouldn't mind working with him.
"He was always a confident young kid. He knew he was going to make it. He would come home prior to the English season, and I would work with him one-on-one, doing throw-downs.
"I would come down and spend 30 minutes in the nets with him throwing balls at him, getting him ready for the English summer. I've always known him as a confident kid.
"In our school system, you leave when you are 18. He left when he was 17, so he was pretty young. He had made the Natal Schools B side in the national league.
"But he said, no, he was tired of playing with these youngsters, and he wanted to go and play with the older boys.
"A lot of people said that was arrogance, but to be a top-class sportsman nowadays, you have to have some form of arrogance. Confidence plays a huge part.
"He has been exceptional for world cricket. Sport needs characters and he is one of those. He will go down as one of the best. Good luck to him."
Shedlock's influence is now being felt in youth cricket in the UAE. He was in the Emirates last month to conduct a coaching clinic with the Young Talents Cricket Academy (YTCA).
He is the latest in a long line of prominent coaches to have helped out at the country's most prolific cricketing finishing school. The list includes the ex-Pakistan coach Mushtaq Mohammed, India's bowling coach Venkatesh Prasad and the late Bob Woolmer. Shedlock, who is Darryl Cullinan's assistant with the Indian Cricket League side Kolkata Tigers, is planning to set up an exchange scheme between the YTCA and his own academy back home in Natal.
@Email:pradley@thenational.ae
Showsports 2, 2pm
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PRIMERA LIGA FIXTURES
All times UAE ( 4 GMT)
Saturday
Atletico Madrid v Sevilla (3pm)
Alaves v Real Madrid (6.15pm)
Malaga v Athletic Bilbao (8.30pm)
Girona v Barcelona (10.45pm)
Sunday
Espanyol v Deportivo la Coruna (2pm)
Getafe v Villarreal (6.15pm)
Eibar v Celta Vigo (8.30pm)
Las Palmas v Leganes (8.30pm)
Real Sociedad v Valencia (10.45pm)
Monday
Real Betis v Levante (11.pm)
THE SPECS
Engine: 6.75-litre twin-turbocharged V12 petrol engine
Power: 420kW
Torque: 780Nm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Price: From Dh1,350,00
On sale: Available for preorder now
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
Founder: Areej Selmi
Based: Gaza
Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
THE BIO
Born: Mukalla, Yemen, 1979
Education: UAE University, Al Ain
Family: Married with two daughters: Asayel, 7, and Sara, 6
Favourite piece of music: Horse Dance by Naseer Shamma
Favourite book: Science and geology
Favourite place to travel to: Washington DC
Best advice you’ve ever been given: If you have a dream, you have to believe it, then you will see it.
EA%20Sports%20FC%2024
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Zodi%20%26%20Tehu%3A%20Princes%20Of%20The%20Desert
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The specs
Engine: Dual 180kW and 300kW front and rear motors
Power: 480kW
Torque: 850Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh359,900 ($98,000)
On sale: Now
Nayanthara: Beyond The Fairy Tale
Starring: Nayanthara, Vignesh Shivan, Radhika Sarathkumar, Nagarjuna Akkineni
Director: Amith Krishnan
Rating: 3.5/5
UAE SQUAD
Khalid Essa, Ali Khaseif, Fahad Al Dhanhani, Adel Al Hosani, Bandar Al Ahbabi, Mohammad Barghash, Salem Rashid, Khalifa Al Hammadi, Shaheen Abdulrahman, Hassan Al Mahrami, Walid Abbas, Mahmoud Khamis, Yousef Jaber, Majed Sorour, Majed Hassan, Ali Salmeen, Abdullah Ramadan, Abdullah Al Naqbi, Khalil Al Hammadi, Fabio De Lima, Khalfan Mubarak, Tahnoon Al Zaabi, Ali Saleh, Caio Canedo, Ali Mabkhout, Sebastian Tagliabue, Zayed Al Ameri
Hotel Silence
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
Pushkin Press
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Electoral College Victory
Trump has so far secured 295 Electoral College votes, according to the Associated Press, exceeding the 270 needed to win. Only Nevada and Arizona remain to be called, and both swing states are leaning Republican. Trump swept all five remaining swing states, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, sealing his path to victory and giving him a strong mandate.
Popular Vote Tally
The count is ongoing, but Trump currently leads with nearly 51 per cent of the popular vote to Harris’s 47.6 per cent. Trump has over 72.2 million votes, while Harris trails with approximately 67.4 million.
MATCH INFO
Inter Milan v Juventus
Saturday, 10.45pm (UAE)
Watch the match on BeIN Sports
How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
Nepotism is the name of the game
Salman Khan’s father, Salim Khan, is one of Bollywood’s most legendary screenwriters. Through his partnership with co-writer Javed Akhtar, Salim is credited with having paved the path for the Indian film industry’s blockbuster format in the 1970s. Something his son now rules the roost of. More importantly, the Salim-Javed duo also created the persona of the “angry young man” for Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970s, reflecting the angst of the average Indian. In choosing to be the ordinary man’s “hero” as opposed to a thespian in new Bollywood, Salman Khan remains tightly linked to his father’s oeuvre. Thanks dad.
The%20specs
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COMPANY%20PROFILE
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The specs: 2019 BMW X4
Price, base / as tested: Dh276,675 / Dh346,800
Engine: 3.0-litre turbocharged in-line six-cylinder
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Power: 354hp @ 5,500rpm
Torque: 500Nm @ 1,550rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 9.0L / 100km
If you go
Where to stay: Courtyard by Marriott Titusville Kennedy Space Centre has unparalleled views of the Indian River. Alligators can be spotted from hotel room balconies, as can several rocket launch sites. The hotel also boasts cool space-themed decor.
When to go: Florida is best experienced during the winter months, from November to May, before the humidity kicks in.
How to get there: Emirates currently flies from Dubai to Orlando five times a week.
From Zero
Artist: Linkin Park
Label: Warner Records
Number of tracks: 11
Rating: 4/5
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
The biog
Name: James Mullan
Nationality: Irish
Family: Wife, Pom; and daughters Kate, 18, and Ciara, 13, who attend Jumeirah English Speaking School (JESS)
Favourite book or author: “That’s a really difficult question. I’m a big fan of Donna Tartt, The Secret History. I’d recommend that, go and have a read of that.”
Dream: “It would be to continue to have fun and to work with really interesting people, which I have been very fortunate to do for a lot of my life. I just enjoy working with very smart, fun people.”
FINAL RESULT
Sharjah Wanderers 20 Dubai Tigers 25 (After extra-time)
Wanderers
Tries: Gormley, Penalty
cons: Flaherty
Pens: Flaherty 2
Tigers
Tries: O’Donnell, Gibbons, Kelly
Cons: Caldwell 2
Pens: Caldwell, Cross
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%E2%80%98FSO%20Safer%E2%80%99%20-%20a%20ticking%20bomb
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Pearls on a Branch: Oral Tales
Najlaa Khoury, Archipelago Books
Company profile
Name: Tratok Portal
Founded: 2017
Based: UAE
Sector: Travel & tourism
Size: 36 employees
Funding: Privately funded
Company%20profile
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The Florida Project
Director: Sean Baker
Starring: Bria Vinaite, Brooklynn Prince, Willem Dafoe
Four stars
