The complex legacy of a flawed hero
Midweek Book Extract and giveaway ($), PLUS: The BYC on the CWC23 final
Brendon McCullum is one of the most fascinating characters I have covered as I approach three decades in the sportswriting game. Some of the things that interested me about him bugged the hell out of his legion of critics: that he didn’t arrive fully formed as a player or a person; that his development on all fronts was far from linear; and that he had the maddening insistence on doing things the way he thought they should be done, not the way you thought they should be. He never came remotely close to being the perfect player, he’d never claim to be remotely close to the perfect person, but he was close to the perfect captain in terms of what a moribund New Zealand team needed at the time.
I’d also suggest McCullum underwent a lot more personal growth than some of his most trenchant critics did, many of whom never truly left the 80s and some of whom shamelessly used the captaincy fracas to pursue their own agendas.
To win a copy of Modern New Zealand Cricket Greats: From Stephen Fleming to Kane Williamson, in the comments below tell me your favourite Brendon McCullum innings (could be any format) and why in no more than 100 words.
On to the extract…
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THE morning of 18 February 2014 witnessed one of the more remarkable sights in New Zealand sporting history. It was a grey old Tuesday morning in the nation’s capital, but there were queues of people lined up where Cambridge Terrace on one side and Adelaide Road at the other met the big green roundabout that is the Basin Reserve.
It was the last day of what was essentially a dead test. New Zealand had batted themselves to safety on the fourth day and the now-lifeless wicket was offering nothing to give New Zealand any realistic hope of running through a powerful Indian batting line-up on the final afternoon.
There were just 19 good reasons to gather. Brendon McCullum, New Zealand’s captain and No. 5, would start the morning on 281 not out, on the precipice of becoming the first New Zealander to 300, a figure made more mythical by Martin Crowe being dismissed on this same ground for 299 some 23 years earlier.
“It’s a bit like climbing Everest and pulling a hamstring before the last stride,” Crowe would say more than once to describe the pain felt at falling short of the exclusive club.
McCullum’s hamstrings were tight. So was the rest of his body. His mind was fraying slightly, too. On the fourth evening he had reacted scratchily when the 12th man had offered him encouragement to see it through to stumps. “Listen, I’m on 200 and whatever, surely I’m kind of done here, eh?” The unwavering water carrier insists that it would be a tremendous achievement to bat the whole day on top of his work on day three so McCullum negotiated a deal and sure enough, when he saw out the day, the first thing he saw on his seat in the changing rooms were two cans of beer in an ice bucket and a packet of cigarettes. As an advertisement for the benefits of healthy living, it fell short; as a salve for an aching body and unfocused mind, it was just the ticket.
“I put my bat down, take my gloves off, open a can and just hammer it,” McCullum would write.
To that point it had not been a typical McCullum innings, though even that reads a little lazily because the diminutive right-hander had shown there was far more to his game than the swashbuckling middle-order cavalier he had become known as. Two of his more complete test innings had come under the cosh — 96 made at No. 3 against England at Lord’s in just his fourth test (he’d batted No. 9 in the first innings so it was a sudden and dizzying promotion), and 225 opening against India at Hyderabad in 2010, his first tour since giving away the gloves and taking his selection chances as a batter alone.
Still, when he reached his first milestone at the Basin — somewhat fortuitously as he’d been dropped by Virat Kohli in front of the wicket early — he’d shown the sort of restraint not normally associated with his game. “Fifty-one off 146 balls,” intoned Scott Styris from the tenuous safety of the broadcasting booths atop the creaking RA Vance stand, “a very unusual McCullum innings.” When he baseball-batted Ishant Sharma over long-on for six to move from 94 to 100, it felt like his way of showing the ‘usual’ McCullum was still lurking in there; he just knew when to hide and when to show himself.
McCullum batted all through day four, first in partnership with BJ Watling, a man he had smoked many ‘durries’ with behind various grandstands and changing sheds around the world as they sought to calm frazzled nerves, and then James Neesham, a debutant with enough outward confidence to carry himself like a veteran.
At stumps, McCullum skolled his can of lager with the quiet satisfaction of knowing that he had done what he had set out to do: bat his side to safety and a series win. Still, when he went to bed that night after a pint with his dad Stu and New Zealand Cricket president Stephen Boock at the Cambridge Hotel, he did so knowing that the next 19 runs were the most important. Even if sleep came easily, it did not take long the following morning to understand the magnitude of the interest. Day four might have been one for the cricket purists, but the prospects for history on day five had captured the attention of the entire country, it seemed. When he flicked on the telly, front and centre was Crowe, a man McCullum had a complicated relationship with after he was elevated to the captaincy to replace Ross Taylor, Crowe’s protégé. But here was Crowe, talking effusively about the significance of reaching the elusive triple century, what it would mean to all the players that had come before McCullum and all of those who had followed the team through thick and thin.
In his autobiography, Declared, McCullum wrote:
“I didn’t really know it was that big a deal, probably because milestones have never really been my gig... I like to think that what’s more important is the fact that we’ve batted for two-and-a-half days to save a test match against the number-one team in the world, which means that, with a day to play, we’ve as good as won the series. That’s what I’ve been thinking is significant.
“Then we get to the ground and everybody is asking ‘How are you feeling?’
“‘Yeah, not too bad. A bit stiff.’
“‘Yeah, but how does it feel turning up to the ground on two hundred and eighty? How does that feel?’
“‘To be honest, I was feeling a lot better before you asked.’
“Then we’re out doing our warm-ups, our stretches, in our little circle, having a laugh and a chat, and I turn around and just for a second clock the stands and the grassy banks of the Basin. Man, there are a lot of people here! An hour before kick-off on the last day of the test match! Then I start hearing people yelling out to me. And I see the signs they’re carrying and the numbers still pouring through the gate.
“Back in the changing room, I have one last durry and walk out there with Jimmy. All the guys are clapping us out. As I step towards the boundary rope, I take a moment, look at the crowd, and I get it that they’ve come to see a bit of history... I don’t normally get nervous, but now I am. Mainly because I just don’t want to let people down... If I get out for anything less [than 300], this innings will be a disappointment not just for me, but for the nation.”
The next 10 overs would be a seminal moment in McCullum’s career and, indeed, New Zealand cricket. After a nervy start in overcast conditions — McCullum edges his score up by just three singles in the first five overs — he starts to find his groove with a flicked four through midwicket off Sharma and an imperious pull off Zaheer Khan. The following over from Sharma sees near-calamity. On 293, McCullum gets an edge to a leg-cutter and his head is on a swivel as he turns to see it drop inches short of MS Dhoni’s gloves.
The Basin collectively exhales, while the camera pans to show his father sitting alone, chewing his nails. He didn’t get time to bite them to the quick. After a brief diversion where Jimmy Neesham became the third New Zealander behind Bruce Taylor and Scott Styris to score a debut century at No. 8, McCullum pounced on a ball from Khan that was neither very short nor very wide and slid it powerfully behind point to the boundary.
“The next five minutes I’ll never forget. The crowd won’t stop cheering, won’t sit down,” McCullum would write.
As a headline in the global behemoth that is ESPNcricinfo would say, “the sprinter had just run a marathon”. In doing so he had found something that had been elusive throughout his career: near-universal adoration.
Crowe, who late in his life had become an insightful and reflective columnist, wrote the following about McCullum’s innings and his metamorphosis as a cricketer.
“McCullum is the true leader, marching his men forward with exemplary and extraordinary example.
“With New Zealand 30 for 3 in Auckland, he strode in and dismantled the Indian attack for 224, setting up a stunning, close-fought victory. To then contemplate a dire situation with a stirring rearguard action only days later, in the second test, and occupy the crease longer than any Kiwi has ever done, speaks volumes of his character and his stamina. For a man with career-threatening back and knee injuries screaming at him, it simply defies all odds.
“From the little I know of Brendon, he is a sensitive, intensely proud, even emotionally driven, human. By removing the emotion from his game he allowed the right energy to flow through his game, settling him into a zone of fierce focus and determination, where he was always aware the job was never done. He showed that with responsibility he could seek a new wisdom, a better way, and that a large picture can only be created one fluent stroke at a time. His defence was immaculate, his footwork aligned and flowing, to making the bowler bend down to field, his concentration built one over at a time.”
The triple century was, to a degree, indicative of where McCullum was as a player in the autumn of his career. If he had spent his spring and summer as a freakishly athletic wicketkeeper, seemingly more capable of frustrating the watching public as he was of entertaining them with dashing cameos, 2014 was a revelation. He would become the first New Zealander to score 1000 test runs in a calendar year — a feat you would have got long odds on McCullum achieving ahead of more studious run-gatherers like Glenn Turner, Crowe, Ross Taylor and Kane Williamson.
It had been presaged in December 2013 with his first test century in three years, and his first as captain, against the West Indies at Dunedin, but that gave little clue as to the sheer volume of runs that were about to ping from the middle of his Puma-branded bat. Against India, his match-saving 302 was preceded by a double century at Auckland that set up victory. A poor personal tour of the West Indies was followed by a tour to the UAE to face Pakistan where he got better every innings, scoring 18, 39, 43, 45 and, finally, a 279-ball 202 to lead New Zealand to one of its most improbable comeback victories — a test overshadowed by the death of Phillip Hughes.
His final act of the year told you everything you needed to know about how McCullum viewed the game. Test cricket was returning to Christchurch for the first time since the devastating 2011 earthquake that had killed 185 people and left many buildings, including the old home of cricket at Lancaster Park, uninhabitable and unusable. It was the first test at Hagley Oval, against Sri Lanka. The evening before the test, Canterbury Cricket CEO and former New Zealand captain Lee Germon cried when he handed the players their test caps, thankful that his kids would get a chance to enjoy what he did as a child and watch test cricket in their home city.
New Zealand lost the toss on a misty Christchurch morning and were in a measure of trouble at 88 for 3 when the skipper strode to the middle in the first over after lunch, with Kane Williamson on 34 not out. The next wicket fell 126 runs later at 214, with Williamson dismissed for 54. In between times McCullum has smashed a 74-ball century, surpassing the fastest test century by a New Zealander, a record he had set one innings earlier in Sharjah.
McCullum was seeing it like a beach ball and another double century was at his mercy, but on 195 and facing just his 134th ball, he was caught on the long-off boundary attempting his 12th six. He would have smashed Astle’s 153-ball record for the double-ton. To the roundheads among us, it made no sense. The game was so far advanced and McCullum was in such good form against an attack that was on its knees, why wouldn’t he have just milked the remaining five runs to bring up his fifth 200-plus score? It’s a question McCullum would have no truck with. To see the world through his eyes, he was on a roll, hitting with the wind against a spinner, Tharindu Kaushal, on debut. He’d been out pfaffing around as milestones approached in the past, so why wouldn’t he try to reach this in one hit in those circumstances?
It was the inveterate gambler in McCullum coming out, but it was also the start of something else — a patchy and overly frenetic end to his international career.
But we’ll get to that soon.