When Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood or Scott Boland zings the new ball past the outside edge of Zak Crawley this series, Brendon McCullum may recall a specific moment from his final Test.
First ball on a seaming Christchurch pitch in February 2016, McCullum was well beaten by Hazlewood, and instantly made the sort of calculation that epitomised the closing chapters of his playing career and the first glorious year of his revelatory partnership with England’s captain Ben Stokes.
Dynamic duo Ben Stokes (left) and England coach Brendon McCullum.Credit: Getty Images
“To me they were trying to hit a good length the entire time, which is the biggest danger for me on a wicket like that,” McCullum told his friend and former mentor Mike Hesson earlier this year. “So I was better off changing things a little bit by putting them under pressure and stop them bowling that length.
“It had to take a little bit of courage to do it, but I think I would’ve died in the hole anyway. For me, the odds were more aligned to having a crack than they were to sitting, waiting for one to have your name on it.”
What followed was the fastest Test century of them all. Like the 50-over World Cup final the previous year, Australia would go on to win the match, but could not prevent McCullum and New Zealand from creating memories to last a lifetime. And, indirectly, set the blueprint for the “Bazball” now being played by England.
A bit over a decade ago, there was a time when McCullum may have remained what he had been up to that point, a somewhat wayward talent with a spotty international record, as part of a mediocre New Zealand side.
Instead, he resolved to try something different, trusting his aggressive batting talent and puncher’s chance of making big runs, helping the Black Caps to make some history of their own, and ultimately wending his way to the England job.
The catalysts for that change appeared to stem from a humiliating first day as New Zealand captain, bowled out for 45 by South Africa in 2013, and the trauma of playing a Test match in the shadow of Phillip Hughes’ death the following November.
As a consequence of those moments, McCullum searched for and succeeded in finding something elemental: the reasons why he first played the game as a kid were the same ones that would free him up to be his best.
“When you’re a kid, you might have gone nought, nought, nought, but you open the curtains and you hope it’s not raining because you wanted another opportunity,” McCullum told Ian Ward during the Lord’s Test against Ireland. “For a period of my career I was hoping it was raining when you pulled back the curtains, so you didn’t have to be confronted with disappointment or failure.
“It wasn’t until I kind of said, ‘What are you doing? The game’s not fun if you’re doing that’. So go and lose yourself in the game, play for the little boy who loved the game, and that was the latter part of my career, and that really did shape my captaincy, the final stages of my career, and it’s definitely shaped me as a person and as a coach.”
That haunted visage aptly describes the way England had increasingly been playing Test cricket in the latter days of Joe Root’s tenure as captain. Stokes’ appointment as the next leader had long been thought likely, but it was through the hunch of new performance chief Rob Key that McCullum was brought in alongside him - up to that point he had only coached Twenty20 sides with mixed results.
McCullum isn’t an overly technical mentor, and in tactical terms Stokes likes to think on his feet. But what they have conjured with great effectiveness is a team environment where the consequences of failure do not hang heavily over the players. They have been filled with belief, inured from fear, and eagerly anticipate time together.
“Me and Brendon will always stay very true in terms of getting together and spending time with each other away from the cricket field as so, so important to this group of players,” Stokes said. “It’s a bit different to Australia. They were playing last week, and we were playing golf. Couldn’t be further away from each other.”
Building relationships: Brendon McCullum chats with Ollie Pope during a nets session.Credit: Getty Images
That’s not quite true - Australia also started their trip with several days mixing golf and training in Formby, near Liverpool. And the openers, David Warner and Usman Khawaja, preferred golf to nets during the team’s main session on Wednesday. As McCullum puts it, the relationship-building is, if anything, more worthwhile than the cricket.
“I love spending time with people, I’m a very social person, I want to try to get the best out of everyone you encounter,” he said. “The performance out on the field is great, you’re sitting on the balcony at Lord’s and there’s a full house and a nice hum going and you’re watching some of the best players in the world going about their work, and you’re pinching yourself.
“But the real fun for us is working with the guys, building those relationships, getting to know them as people, getting to know their wives, their kids and what their life is like, and then working with their skills and then whatever happens on the field, it’s almost secondary.”
If that sounds like Ted Lasso, there is plenty of proof that this is no fairytale. In fact, much of the coverage of England under Stokes and McCullum has resembled that of Richmond AFC’s chronicler Trent Crimm, who offers the following assessment: “Ted, it’s going to work. Total Football. And I’ll tell you why: The Lasso Way. You haven’t switched tactics in a week. You’ve done this over three seasons by slowly but surely building a club-wide culture of trust and support through thousands of imperceptible moments all leading to their inevitable conclusion.”
The best measure of that conclusion for McCullum will be Crawley. No other player has been as closely watched, nor as staunchly defended, by McCullum. Why? Because just as he sees England’s success as intertwined with the lessons of his own story, Crawley is the young McCullum, drifting between the possibilities of anonymity and immortality.
“My offence game was a lot better than my defence game,” he said.
“The defence game was there if you were in the frame of mind that you were still looking to put the bowler under pressure, but there were times where I relied on that defence too much, whereby I wasn’t strong enough at it and I didn’t end up succeeding.
“Zak has a much stronger offensive game, and we believe in his ability to put opposition teams under pressure. Every now and then he’s going to get out. It can happen, but if he gets going ...”
Brendon McCullum has been a staunch defender of Zak Crawley.Credit: Getty Images
How long might McCullum carry on in the job? He led New Zealand for three years, and coached Kolkata in the IPL for the same period. A three-year story arc would be another Lasso parallel. And McCullum also knows the benefits of letting go.
“Probably the most proud aspect of it all is seeing how much they really grew when I stepped away,” he has said of New Zealand. “Then the guys really blossomed from that point on, and that’s what you want, because the last thing you want is when you step out of the door, that everything crumbles. You want everything to flourish.”
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