As supporters and promoters of the upcoming KFC T20 Big Bash League count down the days until Kevin Pietersen turns out for the Melbourne Stars, the man himself has revealed his distaste for Australia because of the way he’s hounded and abused by local fans.

Pietersen will be – along with recently retired South African allrounder Jacques Kallis – one of the major drawcards of BBL|04, which begins on December 18 when his Stars’ franchise takes on the Adelaide Strikers at Adelaide Oval.

Given his international standing as the man that rival crowds – and even a vocal portion of his team’s own fans – love to hate, the South African-born ex-England batsman is sure to cop more than his share of attention throughout the coming summer.

That fervour will only be enhanced by details contained in Pietersen’s new autobiography ‘KP’ and through his social media baiting of followers in Brisbane – where he was targeted by the local daily newspaper during last summer’s Ashes Test – ahead of his arrival in Australia.

Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide & Perth are the only cities that should be allowed Big Bash cricket...🎣 — Kevin Pietersen (@KP24) July 30, 2014

BRISBANE - your only entertainment in that city has arrived. Get your kindles out, that's if kindles have reached there...#KPBook — Kevin Pietersen (@KP24) October 9, 2014

.@HeatBBL goodness me, there's twitter in Brisbane? Didn't think there was...might have to be nice now! — Kevin Pietersen (@KP24) July 30, 2014

But Pietersen has also used his book to detail the relentless abuse he has copped from crowds throughout Australia on his previous tours here as a member of England teams, and why he felt the need to escape from Sydney as soon as last summer’s fifth and final Ashes Test was finished.

“When the cricket is done I never hang around in Australia,” Pietersen writes.

“Once the job is finished I am out of there like a bat out of hell – there's just too much abuse.

"My wife, my child, my mother-in-law and my parents were all in Australia (during the previous summer when England was beaten five-nil in the Test series).

“We needed to get out. I'd had enough abuse.

“Is abuse too strong a word? Maybe.

“The Aussies think it is all good fun, but when you are at the end of a long and disastrous tour, when you have people you love around you and you're being called a wanker ten times a day, the joke wears thin.

"I'm the pantomime villain in Australia.

“I'm the one getting the boos and the abuse.

“They basically clean me out for three months.”

Pietersen, whose international career was terminated by the England and Wales Cricket Board in the wake of the 2013-14 Ashes whitewash, has taken aim at a number of former teammates and England officials in his autobiography that was formally launched last week.

But he also paints a less-than-flattering picture of Australian crowds that he regularly encountered, such as those who hovered around the practice nets at Adelaide Oval prior to the second Ashes Test after England had suffered a hefty defeat in Brisbane.

“At the Adelaide Oval, the public can get up right next to the nets, so there were hundreds of people watching, booing and hissing – I'm the pantomime villain in Australia, after all,” he wrote.

“I had Australian guys abusing me from a metre away: you're f..ing shit, mate ... what a f..ing shit shot ... you can't score runs in the nets, mate ... great shot today, I'm sure your teammates are proud ... you've let your country down ... why don't you f… off back to South Africa ... hey KP, you're a wanker ..."

Pietersen, who last summer engaged in a Twitter exchange with a Brisbane journalist after he was described in the ‘Courier Mail’ newspaper as ‘so arrogant not even his own teammates like him’, subsequently admitted he respected the Australian media “for the way they come at our positions”.

But in his book, Pietersen paints a different picture claiming the material that is written in Australian newspapers is then utilised by Australian players to shape their on-field taunts as well as crowds in the grandstands and the outer who “seem to have got the same memo”.

“Usually, although I can't not hear it, I can ignore it,” Pietersen wrote, before going on to explain why that isn’t the case when he’s in Australia.

“I've developed selective hearing. So when someone calls me an idiot, or someone calls me a genius, I can laugh it off.

“But in Australia it's different.

“They are getting under your skin from the start.

“Sometimes it's abuse. Sometimes it's just deliberately annoying, like having a guy screaming Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeevin, Keeeeeeeeeeeeevin over and over again for a few hours when you are fielding.

“Right behind you. Over and over and over and over again, until you convince yourself that no jury would convict you for killing the bastard.

“And in Australia, the pressure doesn't end when the playing ends.

“The cricket media and the cricket public see the Tests as a blood sport.

“Everywhere you go, they are on your case. Me especially.

“Walking down the street I get told, you're bloody shit mate, thirty times a day. I'm just a plastic bloody pom, I'm going to get hit so hard I'll be eating through a straw ...”

Pietersen is expected to arrive in Australia in early December, with Fairfax media reporting recently that he was planning to make a cameo appearance for a Melbourne-based grade cricket team on the weekend of December 13-14.

And his return to Brisbane is scheduled for Sunday December 28 when the Melbourne Stars take on the Brisbane Heat.