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World Cup 2015: New Zealand March 10, 2015

Never played under captain like Brendon - Hadlee

Andrew McGlashan26 Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment shares 26

Richard Hadlee: "I had some good captains, but Brendon is something a litt le bit special at themoment."

New Zealand have been playing it cool over recent weeks. They have known they are heavily fancied for the WorldCup, as strongly as the nation has ever been, but while embracing the benefits of a home tournament they havebeen keen to try and keep a lid on the emotions.

Shortly, that lid could well be ripped off. Not against Bangladesh in Hamilton, but come a week on Saturday inWellington. In a way, the cat is already out of the bag.

In his post-match press conference following the Afghanistan match in Napier, Daniel Vettori referenced "the biggestmatch of our careers" when throwing ahead to the quarter-final. And on Tuesday, the cricket team and the All Blackswere linked in the same question to Trent Boult, which led him to say: "I've never been compared to an All Black."

When the two sports are mentioned in the same breath you know something is brewing.

At the head of all this - and one of the men who will need to marshal the New Zealand players through the quarter-final and, the nation hopes, two further matches - is Brendon McCullum. He has certainly not been cowered by thedemands of the last few weeks. If anything they have emboldened him to find new levels of aggression both in hiscaptaincy and batting.

His 42 off 19 balls against Afghanistan was not the most significant innings in the tournament, but it meant he wasthe first batsman to make three consecutive scores over 40 at a strike-rate of 200-plus following his displays againstEngland and Australia. In the field, he has almost created a new brand with his all-out attacking approach: theMcCullum way.

He is the most talked about sportsman in New Zealand at the moment and there is no shortage of plaudits coming hisway. In these pages recently he was labelled an "honorary Aussie" by Ashley Mallett. The latest praise came from twoof New Zealand's finest ever players: Stephen Fleming, an outstanding leader himself, and the country's greatestcricketer, Sir Richard Hadlee.

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"It's fair to say, that in my career of 18 years through the 1970s and the 1980s, I didn't play under a captain asaggressive as Brendon," Hadlee said. "I had some good captains, but Brendon is something a litt le bit special at themoment."

Hadlee, taking the bowlers' view, pinpointed McCullum in the field and the utmost belief he has in his tactics andteam-mates.

"When you're aggressive and proactive, it can be high risk, it can backfire. At this stage it hasn't," Hadlee said. "But,what he is saying to his bowlers, and if I had a captain like that what he would be saying to me is, I back you. I'll giveyou the field that you need to get wickets, and do the job. That would've been nice in my time, although it didn'thappen."

Fleming, who led New Zealand 303 times across all formats from 1997 to 2007, argued that McCullum has beencentral to the evolution of the one-day game which is increasingly rewarding the pursuit of wickets ahead ofcontainment.

"Those rave reviews are right. I think over two years he's helped built a brand of cricket that is aggressive, and insome ways it 's creating the new way to play the ODI game," Fleming, who retains strong links with McCullum throughChennai Super Kings, said. "You're now seeing Michael Clarke, also an excellent captain, do the same. And Dhoni aswell, he's had the bowlers to do it. It's one thing to have that style, number two create a team that can back it up,and that's what I think Brendon's got. But it 's taken a while in the making, but I think you can see the fruits of it."

McCullum has won 55% of his ODIs as captain (26 out of 47), compared to 45% for Fleming, although the sample sizeis much smaller as the latter led in 218 games. As a further example, Martin Crowe won 48% of his 44 ODIs ascaptain. If he leads a victorious World Cup campaign, McCullum will be forever revered.

"He's a naturally aggressive guy, a gambler as well, but I think he's better than that," Fleming said. "I think it 's just anaggressive outlook where we want to hit every ball for six, and it 's obviously contagious. You've got guys who canget up, whereas in the past we've been a litt le bit conservative. But now we're seeing a team that's ready to bleedruns to get wickets and that seems to be the way that the best teams are playing now."

Greatness is Contagious is one of the sayings plastered on posters promoting the tournament. So too, it seems, is theMcCullum way.

Andrew McGlashan is a senior assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo

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