Do Australians give Brendon McCullum enough credit? The English love him and fair enough, why wouldn’t they? He took a sorry-arsed team whose game had become moribund and turned it into the all-singing, all-dancing, boom or bust outfit that are hard to take your eyes off.
It was hard to come away from the 2023 Ashes with much respect for English cricket and its cocksure tendencies. A plank in reason broke at Lord’s and a bitter taste was left when the team snubbed its opponents at the end of the series. McCullum and his coaching style got a bad wrap, in no small part because of the nonsense that emerged from the dressing rooms after the first Test, and that got pinned on the Kiwi.
One thing I think everyone acknowledged during the course of that series and the few that had preceded it was that McCullum and Ben Stokes were, at least, playing an entertaining and better brand of cricket than the wretched outfit that visited Australia in 2020-21. In fact, this was a far more entertaining and aggressive side than any we’d seen on Australian shores for some time. England had generally done enough at home, but would begin to sweat and swoon the moment they arrived in Australia.
I was speaking to a senior figure in Australian cricket on Thursday who encouraged me to revisit the For the Love of Cricket podcast McCullum did with Stuart Broad and Jos Buttler. I’d skimmed the transcript for an earlier news piece, but hadn’t sat down to listen in detail. It was worth it.
McCullum is a likable character. Laid back, loves a punt, named his bats after horses, laughs readily and has no tickets on himself. He’s easy company, made a lot of friends in the game, his love of which began while hanging around the changerooms when his father played first-class cricket for the storied South Dunedin side. Like Ricky Ponting, he’s a romantic who traces his roots back to being a small boy among the older men in a working-class cricket change room. The pair share a bond off the field and on the golf course that could be traced back to their backgrounds as much as those heady early years in the IPL.
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