Brendon McCullum ‘just had incredible self belief,’ says former mentor

It was probably to be expected that an England team coached by a Kiwi should tune-up for the Test series that gets under way in New Zealand on Thursday by crashing into some tackle bags.

Rugby runs through the blood in these parts and at one stage Brendon McCullum came close to throwing his lot in with the sport himself. As the spirit guide for England’s white-ball transformation, and now a more direct architect of the Test side’s recent rebirth, it’s a case of what might have been.

From a working-class family in Dunedin, the son of Otago cricketer Stuart McCullum, he was clearly a rugby player of some promise. An ebullient captain of the first XV at King’s High School, McCullum was even selected ahead of Dan Carter at fly-half for the South Island Secondary Schools side aged 18.

“That doesn’t mean I was better than him,” McCullum said recently. “It just means the selectors were completely bonkers. But it’s still a great story. I sat next to DC on a plane the other day but I didn’t bring it up – because he knows.”

Two years later, even when McCullum was already part of the New Zealand cricket academy and on the brink of a national call-up, the rugby dream was still being pursued. That was until Sir Richard Hadlee, chief selector, got wind he had been training with Southern Rugby one evening and put the call in.

“Yeah, he was a bit grumpy, but I managed to calm him down a bit,” recalled McCullum, after being told his chances of a national contract would be jeopardised if he continued. The story goes that Hadlee even contacted McCullum’s friends, ordering them not to lend him any boots.

As England’s head coach, McCullum has stressed that players should rediscover the joy of playing sport growing up. Hence when a handful of