Pietersen is the key for England but the others must shine again

South Africa may be insisting they will adopt a quiet approach to Kevin Pietersen but you can bet your bottom dollar that Graeme Smith will stand in front of his team before tomorrow's first Test and say: 'I want you to clean him up.'

Smith knows that if South Africa can consistently dismiss Pietersen cheaply they will not only go a long way towards winning this hugely exciting series but will also bring a smile to their captain's face for all manner of reasons.

Boxing clever: Pietersen dons a different type of gloves during training

I can understand South Africa's reluctance to indulge in a verbal battle with the man who turned his back on them to make his life and career in England.

When they targeted him verbally in the one-day series where he made his name early in 2005, all they succeeded in doing was to wake him up and get his competitive juices flowing.

Pietersen responded by hitting their bowling all around South Africa.

Smith and his team will instead try to intimidate him, make a statement with their extreme pace bowling and test him against the short ball, something that has not really happened to him since he took on and defeated Brett Lee at The Oval in 2005.

How Pietersen will react now, three years on, to playing against the country of his birth for the first time in Test cricket is intriguing.

It is noticeable that England have tried to keep him out of the limelight ahead of the biggest match so far this summer. Perhaps they are trying to make him treat this as just another game, but it is far more than that for him and his team.

When I look at Pietersen I see someone who has the game and the temperament to handle anything that is thrown at him. Yes, this will be the first real examination of his preference for the front foot - and the West Indies got him hopping about a bit last summer - but he can deal with that.

I do not expect him to freeze or show nerves and instead we will see whether he can take another step towards becoming one of the all-time greats. Pietersen is the key man in an England top six who simply must deliver. 

There has been so much talk about their collective failure to score 400 in the first innings of any Test for a year and I have consistently backed them, but they have got to do it now.

Owais Shah: The time is right

I do not even want to see England's players, with respect to the spectators, acknowledging half centuries any more. They should only raise their bats for hundreds and 150s because that is what they will need to score in this series to win it and keep their places.

The time has gone for pretty 30s and 40s, Ian Bell. I want to see you scoring an ugly hundred, when the chips are down, not a pretty one when England are 300 for three.

Ravi Bopara gets better every time I see him, while at 29 Owais Shah is at the right age and of the right experience to be playing Test cricket. I was disappointed he chose not to play for Middlesex against South Africa at Uxbridge because it was the perfect opportunity for him to make a statement, score runs and show England that his time has arrived. He wasted that chance.

Both Shah and Bopara are great players of spin and will surely feature against India this winter if the established six do not fire over the next month, and that is without mentioning Andrew Flintoff, who is on the verge of a comeback.

But what would be really nice is if the established players produced the goods now and said: 'There you are, we told you we could do it again. Thank you, Geoff Miller, for showing faith in us.'

This is the series we have all been waiting for, the one which will show which of these teams is second best in the Test world after Australia. It is a devilishly hard one to call because there is not much between them and that is great.

Sport should be about uncertainties, not turning up knowing that England will beat New Zealand again in Test cricket even if they are not at their best.

The key to me will be whether the ball will swing for England's bowlers and whether they will be able to get Smith and Neil McKenzie out early, thus exposing Hashim Amla to the new ball in conditions alien to him.

If they can, then England can win but if Smith produces the form which saw him score two double hundreds last time he was here in 2003 - when the ball did not swing - then it could be difficult for the hosts.