McCullum Brendon - Brendon McCullum - Declared

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand

ISBN

e: 978-1-927262-88-7

m: 978-1-927262-89-4

A Mower Book

Published in 2015 by Upstart Press Ltd

B3, 72 Apollo Drive, Rosedale

Auckland, New Zealand

www.upstartpress.co.nz

Text Brendon McCullum 2016

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Design and format Upstart Press Ltd 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Ebook designed by www.CVDgraphics.nz

Front cover photo: Getty

To Lis, Riley, Maya and Evie

Thanks for being my inspiration. I cant wrap it in a few simple words what you guys mean to me.

Lis, you have seen my faults and accepted them. You have loved me when I didnt love myself. You encouraged me to keep going when selfishly you must have wanted me to quit. You have been the reason, I feel, that after 14 years of international cricket I walk away a far better person than I ever felt I could be. I thank you.

We will never get back some of those lost memories of you kids growing up so fast while I was away chasing my dreams. But I hope in some small way you are all proud of the person you have allowed me to become.

I look forward to spending the rest of our lives together, forging the next chapter as a family.

I owe you guys everything, but you all already know that because you know me better than I know myself!

Thank you

Lots of love

Brendon

Contents

Writers Note

After the rout in Cape Town in Brendons first test as captain in early 2013, the media became an important litmus test in determining whether the Black Caps were attaining their twin goals of changing the way they conducted themselves as New Zealanders on and off the field, and, more particularly, changing the way they were perceived by New Zealanders. That second aspiration how they were perceived by Kiwis was always going to be mediated in large part by cricket writers, so its not surprising they figure prominently in this book.

Sir David Hare in his autobiography The Blue Touch Paper describes journalism as dangerously easy to do badly. Given that, hats off to almost all the cricket writers quoted in this book, for their eloquence and fairness and to the rest for providing grist to the mill. Theres too many to name here, but Im grateful for the context and objectivity they or most of them have provided, particularly Dylan Cleaver, whose book Brendon McCullum: Inside Twenty20, about the T20 part of Brendons career, was a very useful resource.

Thanks also to Heath Mills for his article Getting Started, published in Between Wickets , which described the baptism of fire for the New Zealand Cricket Players Association back in the dark days of 2002, and to Lis McCullum for her unceasing attention to detail as the drafts rolled in.

* * *

Getting to know Brendon was a treat. Very different in personality and temperament from my only other biographical subject, Richie McCaw, he nevertheless shares at least a couple of attributes with Richie. The obvious one is indefatigable courage, but the other one might be a surprise to someone who doesnt know them. Their smiles. When either of them walks into a room and smiles, the room lights up.

However, Brendons natural effervescence was all but gone when I met him in Adelaide, a few days before the historic pink ball test. He looked absolutely buggered, worn down not just by the kinds of pitches that forced the retirement of Mitchell Johnson, but also by the Cairns shadow which had hung over him for years. The Cairns trial in London, the build-up to giving evidence, the white heat of the media lights, had drained him.

That night over a bottle or two of red wine in a Vietnamese restaurant just down the street from his hotel, he kept telling Lis and me that he believed he still had a couple of fights left in him. He said it more than once, as if trying to convince himself.

I watched the first day of the pink ball test, flew home, then watched luck make a punch-bag of him and his team, as Nigel Llong cocked up a decision that had an enormous bearing on the result. Brendon came home with a 20 series loss that deserved to be an honourable draw.

Being home didnt help his luck in the two return tests. Nor did blowing out his back again. By the time he got to the last test in Christchurch, he was on a regime of anti-inflams, painkillers and steroid injections just to keep him upright. At dinner at Garth Gallaways home, he couldnt sit in the chair for more than five minutes, had to keep getting up, prostrating himself over the table to try to stretch the sciatic nerve off the bulging discs. By that time, his mantra was down to one more fight, one more fight in me.

I had my doubts as I turned up at Hagley Oval for the first day of his final test. I thought it might be a bridge too far, that the flame might already be extinguished. When he came out of the dressing room way too early and walked through an Australian guard of honour to the crease, most of his friends and family in the McCullum marquee would have been fearing the worst. The ball was hooping all over the place, to the extent that Kane Williamson, recently ranked #1 test batsman in the world, had made something like seven runs off 66 balls.

I wouldnt have been alone in that marquee in feeling a glum acceptance that Brendon would shortly be retracing his steps through a politely clapping, gleeful bunch of Aussies. All the old tropes came to mind: fairytales dont happen; sport is cruel. The crowd held its breath and expected the worst.

But Brendon was right. One more fight. To hit the fastest test century ever was something. To do it under those circumstances on that pitch was something else. One of the men whose record he obliterated, the mighty Viv Richards, had hit his runs for a dominant West Indies in a second innings blast with a declaration in sight.

Putting aside for the moment the cool savvy he showed that day in changing his guard, and the amazing handeye that allowed him to see and hit a wildly swinging ball, what stays with me from having seen him staggered and almost felled by the accumulated punches hed taken over the past couple of months, and from the debilitating effects of the back injury that had damn near crippled him, what stays with me and will always stay with me, is the sheer guts of what he did that day. That when the crunch came, he stepped towards it one last time.

Greg McGee July, 2016

Its no time for cameo sound bites. How affected was he by alleged match-fixing approaches? How did he find the strength to drag New Zealand out of the mire after the Ross Taylor captaincy saga and the Cape Town 45? How did he come up with the captaincy innovations and build the joie de vivre which made New Zealand one of crickets most popular touring teams?

President John F Kennedy once said to whom much is given, much shall be required.

Please, Brendon, unleash any shackles of stoicism and lay it all out there.

Andrew Alderson, New Zealand Herald , on the announcement that Brendon was to give the 2016 MCC Spirit of Cricket Lecture at Lords

1
A Pie, a Pint and a Punt

I just love his confidence. The world was there to be taken and that was the way he saw it. He saw every day as an opportunity to do something special... It wasnt always successful... Cricket is an awful game because you fail so regularly compared to your successes. Even the greats do it. To have that attitude is fantastic.