Brook is, in many ways, the TikTok generation’s Pietersen.
Pietersen invented the switch hit – a shot Brook rarely plays. Brook’s version is that tumbling scoop over his and the wicketkeeper’s head, which was absent here.
They are most similar in the way they pick length, allowing them to pull, flat-bat or cut balls from spinners even in good areas.
Brook did so throughout his partnership of 128 with Jos Buttler, who also played superbly for his 80 from 44 balls.
And while Pietersen was educated in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa and Brook under the Cumbrian hills, they come from the same cricketing school.
“That’s the way I play,” Pietersen said after one aggressive shot too many during a Test in 2009.
“I got to 97 playing that way so it obviously wasn’t meant to be.”
Those words could easily have come from the mouth of Brook.
Such words are why Pietersen and Brook have stirred opinion among England fans more than any other batters in the modern era.
“Is it really that hard to just sit back and admire these players for what they are, on the good days and the bad days, and stop berating them for doing things that we would never, ever, ever even think of doing because we simply aren’t on their level to think that way?” Stokes added on social media.
Stokes, who backed Brook to succeed him as Test skipper, has always been a Brook fan.
Picking between Brook and Pietersen may well be pub chat one day, should Brook’s career turn out as many hope.
For what it is worth, there is little to choose between their records at Brook’s age of 27.
