THE loss of eight points for what was rated a poor pitch at Maidstone certainly was a bitter pill for Kent’s administrators, supporters, coaches and players to swallow.

A great deal of work went into our presentation to the appeal committee and our Kent committee members really showed their passion for the club by giving up much of their personal time to prepare for the big event at Lord’s.

But I soon realised facing the appeal committee that we were really up against it and I still believe that the pitch, although bowler-friendly, was far from poor.

I scrutinised the video evidence and believe that The Mote wicket did not produce many horrors for the batmen at all.

I’ve now learnt that to get the ECB to change a decision is about as easy as bowling to Kevin Pietersen in full cry.

The players have handled the situation brilliantly and have shown real maturity by setting about controlling the controllable.

Their main focus has been to raise the levels of their performances and the Warwickshire game was evidence of this.

Once again the bowlers worked well as a unit and Matt Walker and Darren Stevens provided not only very big, but brilliant hundreds that enabled us to take the game away from Warwickshire.

I was astonished to hear criticism of David Fulton’s decision to bat for a large part of day three, those who follow the game seriously would realise this was important in order to give to the pitch time to deteriorate and, by the end of the Kent innings, batting had become pretty difficult.

As soon as Min Patel got busy with the ball I knew Warwickshire were under enormous pressure and his spell of six for 53 showed skill and guile of high quality.

Meanwhile, it is unusual for us to see the Aussie team struggling and who would ever believed Bangladesh might beat them? Sunday’s showdown with England turned out to be the Pietersen show and what an entertaining batting exhibition he gave us.

As a youngster in Durban, Kevin often watched Lance Klusener going through his destructive shot options against the bowling machine.

Kevin has always been a quick learner and in those days he would then put himself through similar routines to those of Lance, and, boy, has it paid off.

His innings was one of the best I have ever seen in one-day cricket, it rated right up there with Steve Waugh’s century against South Africa at Headingley in the 1999 World Cup.

Is Kevin good enough to player Test cricket? Well, I think the entire Aussie team are secretly wishing right now that David Graveney and the England selectors think not.