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THERE is a new billboard at the side of a road not far from my office which consistently draws the eye.

The striking 40ft-wide poster adorning it shows a naked man crouching inside a circle of scorched earth.

A sphere of lightning crackles around him as if he were enlosed in the bulb of a Van De Graff machine.

His skin is electric blue and a set of flaming cricket stumps, soon to become ashes, burn in the background.

The iconic pose is instantly recognisable to anyone who has seen James Cameron's 1984 sci-fi masterpiece, The Terminator.

Arnold Schwarzenegger - the android assassin of the piece - adopted it in the opening reels of that seminal film.

But closer inspection of the poster reveals that this isn't a Christmas plug for a new Director's Cut edition.

The hulking figure who forms its focal point may, at first glance, bear a passing resemblance to the Austrian Oak.

He is a big man, for sure, but sleeker than the current Mayor of California ever was; and, more importantly, he bears a telltale tattoo on the tricep of his left arm: the badge of the English Cricket Board.

It speaks volumes that npower, the utilities company which sponsors the England team, should choose Kevin Pieterson to spearhead its Ashes campaign: a South African upon whose broad shoulders another nation's hopes now rest.

Pieterson, the punk who sported a haircut like a dead skunk and spoke with an accent that rattled the teacups at the Marylebone Cricket Club...

Pieterson, the reluctantly adopted son who returned to his homeland to face jeering crowds...then clubbed 454 runs at an average of 151, including the fastest ever century by an England player in a limited-overs game...

Pieterson, the cocky twenty-something produced like a questionable ace from the sly sleeve of the board of selectors at the start of last year's tumultuous Ashes...

Pieterson, the man-child who came of age at the Oval, smashing a maiden Test century of truly breathtaking bravura...on the final afternoon of arguably the most dramatic series in the history of the sport...

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Early on that famous afternoon Pieterson's county captain Shane Warne put him down at slips; it was the sort of catch the wizard of spin would snaffle nine times out of ten.

It was so fittingly delicious, a final twist to the drama - Australia's outstanding individual (not to mention Pieterson's best buddy) had literally let the Ashes slip through his fingers...and he knew it.

Buoyed by his good fortune, Pieterson plundered runs freely after that – a smash and grab routine that culminated in him punching the air as the crowd rose to salute a new hero.

Craggy with experience at the highest level, the Australians will treat Flintoff with respect this winter; they will respect Harmison, too, if he bangs in deliveries from that fearsome height, as he sometimes can.

But the only player they will truly fear, the only player whose brash unorthodoxy is as unpredictable and dangerous as a firecracker in a lift, is Pieterson.

However harsh things might become at the crease, Pieterson is dauntless; a wild, elemental force with bulging Popeye forearms, who grinningly hoists McGrath and co. to the stars.

Sometimes he will fail - as he did against the Prime Minister's XI, mustering a measly seven runs before succumbing, skittishly, to a short ball.

But sometimes he won't - just ask the New South Wales players who watched 116 runs flow from his pulverising bat in Sydney a week ago.

And on the days when Pieterson doesn't destroy himself, Australia, the wily Dad's Army of international cricket, will fear the might of the man dubbed, in that memorable poster, 'the power behind England'.

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