Before England cricket coach Brendon "Baz" McCullum brought his "Bazball" style to the test match arena, he graced the shores of the Caribbean with his ultra-attacking and clinical style in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) as a player and coach.
McCullum, 41, is regarded as one of New Zealand's finest ever cricketers, having played over 400 international matches. During his 14-year international career, he scored 19 centuries, including a career-best 302 versus India in 2012. He also added 76 fifties and was renowned for his destructive batting and the ability to take on any bowling attack apart. McCullum also captained the Kiwis from 2012 to 2016, leading his country to the final of the 2015 ICC Men's Cricket World Cup. They eventually lost to rivals Australia in the final.
In true McCullum fashion, he signed out from international cricket in some style, scoring the fastest ever test match hundred versus Australia in his final match at the Hagley Oval, Christchurch, in February 2016. Batting at number five, McCullum raced to his century off just 54 balls, eclipsing the previous 56-ball record which was jointly held by West Indies great Sir Vivian Richards and Pakistan's Misbah-ul-Haq. He went on to score 145 off 79 balls and struck six sixes in the process. McCullum's career-total of 107 test sixes is second only to his current England skipper Ben Stokes, who has struck 124 sixes in the Test format.
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As a batsman, McCullum was known for attempting and executing the extraordinary. And those are the qualities which endeared him to the Trinbago Knight Riders (TKR) franchise. McCullum helped TKR to back-to-back CPL titles as a player in the 2017 and 2018 seasons, before repeating the trick as coach in a flawless 2020 season.
In the 2017 and 2018 seasons, McCullum formed a lethal one-two combo with fellow New Zealand batsman Colin Munro atop the TKR batting order, as both batsmen scored in excess of 300 runs in consecutive campaigns. After a subpar showing in 2016 where he scored just 158 runs in ten innings, McCullum returned with a bang in the following season as he amassed 335 runs in 11 innings, scoring three fifties in the process. He notched his CPL top score of 91 versus Jamaica Tallawahs at Sabina Park in Kingston, Jamaica on August 26, 2017.
In the 2018 season, McCullum (343 runs) was one of three TKR batsmen to finish in the top five run-getters alongside Munro (567 runs) and Darren Bravo (353 runs) as the Trinidad and Tobago franchise got their third CPL title. Like the previous campaign, the belligerent New Zealand right-hander scored three fifties, with his highest score of 68 coming versus St Lucia Kings at the Daren Sammy Cricket Ground in St Lucia on August 16, 2018. McCullum put on a mammoth 137 runs for the fourth wicket with Bravo as TKR chased down a massive 213-run target. In the final, he hit a typically brisk 39 off 24 balls as TKR knocked off Guyana Amazon Warriors' 148-run target at the Brian Lara Cricke
