A glance back at five of Brendon McCullum’s greatest performances in Test cricket
Karthik Krishnaswamy11-Feb-201697 v England, Lord’s, 2008
Four years previously, playing his fourth Test match, Brendon McCullum had scored a third-innings 96 in a seesawing Lord’s Test that New Zealand ultimately lost. Now, on his return to the famous venue, he walked in at 41 for 3 on a cloudy first morning, with James Anderson and Stuart Broad showing an early glimpse of their potential as a new-ball partnership. McCullum had come to England fresh from slamming an unbeaten 158 from 73 balls on the opening day of the inaugural edition of the IPL. This was an entirely different situation, and he showed he was up to it: he got his eye in by leaving eight of his first 16 balls alone outside his off stump, and then went on the attack despite not being at his most fluent, cracking a run-a-ball 97 with 13 fours and two sixes while admitting that he middled only one of them. Once again, he missed a chance to get on the honours board, getting bowled off his pad by Monty Panesar, but his innings paved the way for New Zealand to post a respectable 277 in their first innings, in a rain-ravaged match that eventually ended in a draw.104 v Australia, Wellington, 2010
The opening Test of the 2009-10 Trans-Tasman Trophy was shaping up to become one of those clinical Australian demolitions: centuries from Michael Clarke and Marcus North before a surprisingly early declaration at 459 for 5, and a five-wicket haul from Doug Bollinger to rout New Zealand for 157. Following on, New Zealand were five down and still 119 short of making Australia bat again when McCullum joined his captain Daniel Vettori. On a blustery fourth day punctuated by spells of rain, the pair stretched their partnership to 126, with McCullum playing a smattering of aggressive shots – including consecutive cover-driven fours off Mitchell Johnson – in an innings where he otherwise curbed his natural instincts. Vettori was out for 77, but McCullum carried on to end the day batting on 94, in the obdurate company of Darryl Tuffey. New Zealand had scored 182 runs on the fourth day, for the loss of only one wicket, and given themselves an outside chance of saving the game, particularly given the weather. But Ryan Harris found a way past McCullum soon after he brought up his hundred on the fifth morning, and New Zealand’s last four wickets tumbled for a mere 19 runs, paving the way for a ten-wicket Australian win.302 v India, Wellington, 2014
India have suffered more at McCullum’s hands than any other team in Test cricket. Against them he has scored 1224 runs at 68.00, and made three of his four double hundreds – a match-saving 225 in Hyderabad, a match-winning 224 in an Auckland Test full of outrageous swings of fortune, and, in the very next game in Wellington, his greatest Test-match performance. India were in the ascendancy throughout the first half of the match. They rolled the hosts over for 192, took a 246-run lead, and shortly after lunch on the third day had New Zealand five down for 94. With more than two-and-a-half days remaining in the game, New Zealand needed a further 152 to make India bat again. By the time India got a chance to bat again, it was nearly lunch-time on day five. By then, McCullum had added 352 with BJ Watling, a further 179 with James Neesham, cancelled out New Zealand’s heavy deficit and moved them into a position where they could set a weary, battered India a target of 435. By then, he had played the longest innings in Test cricket by a New Zealand batsman, become their first triple-centurion, and drawn to the Basin Reserve a Test-match throng that signaled a new wave of enthusiasm for cricket in his country.Against Pakistan in Sharjah in 2014: when Brendon McCullum went bonkers with the bat even as the cricket world mourned•AFP202 v Pakistan, Sharjah, 2014
Pakistan ended the first day of the Sharjah Test 281 for 3. Then, the cricket world changed. The next morning brought news of Phillip Hughes’ death. The second day was abandoned, and the Test extended by a day. A ghostly air hung around the ground when play resumed with two listless teams going through the motions. Pakistan collapsed; New Zealand barely reacted to the fall of wickets; no one bowled a bouncer.Then came New Zealand’s turn to bat. Opening the batting was McCullum; he had opened the batting for New South Wales alongside Hughes. An emotionally wrenched McCullum was batting now like he had never batted before. “What you saw,” he later told , “was a team playing without feeling.” With his mind elsewhere, and an air of gloom enveloping the ground, McCullum batted in a manner as close to purely instinctive as possible. The ball kept disappearing. Kane Williamson was scoring at a strike rate of close to 80 at the other end, but he went almost unnoticed as McCullum exploded to the fastest century by a New Zealand batsman, getting to the mark in 78 balls. When he was finally done, he had made 202 – his third double-hundred of the year – off 188 balls. New Zealand went on to complete a series-levelling innings win.In the tragic circumstances surrounding the match, they also discovered how they wanted to play their cricket. McCullum said: “What we learnt was that when you play without any of the pressures and expectations we normally put on ourselves, your skills can be properly expressed.”195 v Sri Lanka, Christchurch, 2014
A month on from Sharjah, New Zealand began their home summer with a first-ever Test match at a packed Hagley Oval. They were in a bit of bother when McCullum strode to the crease, their score 88 for 3, but an air of serenity surrounded their captain. There was a stillness to his batting, a stillness that lasted an extra fraction of a second before those quick hands came into play. By the time he had faced 15 balls, he had hit three fours, those trademark jabs and slaps off the back foot through the off side, needing barely any width to execute them. He was on 27 off 27 when he lofted Angelo Mathews over long-off – that brought up 1000 runs for the year. No New Zealander had ever done it before.On and on he went, carving and lofting, clubbing and flat-batting. In the space of four overs from Tharindu Kaushal and Dhammika Prasad, he hit four sixes. The last of them took him to 99, and he raised his arms to the crowd, believing mistakenly that he had reached his hundred. A single the next ball meant he had reached three figures in 74 balls, breaking his own recently set record by four balls. In his time at the crease, he had scored 100 of New Zealand’s 123 runs. Williamson, who had made a half-century at the other end, later remarked that “it kind of felt like I was the library in a theme park”. McCullum grew more destructive after going past 100, and went from 112 to 138 in the space of six balls from Suranga Lakmal: 466046. Eventually, he holed out within sight of his fourth double-hundred of the year. His 195 came off 134 balls. The fastest Test double-hundred, by Nathan Astle, in the same city in 2002, had come off 153 balls.
