KP: Surrey Captain

For the first time since the end of last season Kevin Pietersen will appear in a Surrey shirt this week, and as captain no less, against Cambridge University.

The side he leads out will be a very young one, although Gary Wilson and Matthew Spriegel will be in the side as well. The young batsmen in the side, the likes of Shaun Cousens, Rory Burns, Arun Harinath and Tom Lancefield will hopefully look at this as an opportunity to learn from one of the finest batsman they are likely to play with. I think with Ramprakash perhaps playing less one day cricket there is a slot open in the batting lineup for limited overs cricket (depending on whether Adams persists with picking lots of bowlers or not), Burns looks to me best placed to snap that up although Harinath does appear to have expanded his range of shots since last year.

Interestingly there is no place in the side for Michael Brown, who I assumed Adams would want to be playing as much cricket as possible, I'm not sure what the story is there but I hope its not another injury.

In the short term Pietersen may well turn out for Surrey against Scotland in the CB40 on Sunday and then probably for the Championship match against Essex at Whitgift, which will give Adams a huge selection headache. The bottom line remains though that KP needs cricket before the first Sri Lanka test so space will probably be made for him, whether its a bowler or a batsman who makes way remains to be seen.

Update: Richard Prew, via the magic of Twitter informs me that Michael Brown has a back injury.