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Brendon McCullum has had his fair share of T20 experience, and has all his fingers dug deep into the franchise cricket pie. The retired New Zealander is one of only three players [Wriddhiman Saha and Virat Kohli] to have featured in the IPL 2008 opener and played all seasons so far, and still remains active. He now travels around the world, embraces different cultures and throws his bat around for fun at the top of the order for a living. And with a brand new team in IPL 2018 - his fifth in the tournament - he's bringing a little extra bit of leadership skills to the table.
"I guess when you're 36 and you've played around a little bit, you've got a few experiences that you can try and assist your captain with," McCullum said ahead of RCB's first home game.
RCB made their decision to not bring Chris Gayle in for this season, and turned their attention to McCullum instead, fighting off interest from Rajasthan Royals and Delhi Daredevils to snap him up. Beyond the big-hitting skills, RCB's return on investment lies in how well he teams up with Kohli and the other leadership figures in the side. On his part, McCullum did just that the moment he joined up with the squad.
"Virat and I, our relationship is very good as well. He's open to some of the things I come up with. The first thing we did is I spoke to him when I arrived. I said I'll throw a whole lot of ideas at you. You don't feel like you've to use any of them.
"But I hope he feels confident that he knows that myself and AB and Quinton as well, who is a very astute thinker of the game, we'll give him ideas and his prerogative is to be able to use the ones he wants to and make the decisions. It's a tough job, to make the final decision. But I think it'll work well," McCullum opined.
The 36-year-old, who surprisingly quit international cricket before the 2016 World T20, has a calendar filled with T20 assignments. His January and the early part of February are spent in the Australia completing a season of BBL that began previous December, February-March he's in Dubai turning out for the Pakistan Super League and then he flies in to India for IPL during April and May, before jettisoning off to England for Natwest Blast that goes on till the start of September. And then there's CPL too, to complete his bucket list of leagues.
Travelling around the world must be a great incentive but it must be quite a task to settle down and adjust to contrasting settings. But for the easy-going McCullum, that's one of the best parts of his globetrotting career currently.
"That [settling into different cultures] is actually one of the things I like the most about T20 leagues. (It) gives you the opportunity to go and experience different cultures, different environments. I'd like to think of myself as quite a social and easy to get to know person. So you start to open up some great friendships from around the world with different guys you've played with, which I think is pretty special.
"We're obviously cricketers for a short term, this is what gives us an early chance in life and after that life goes on. So you've got to...it is important your integrity and reputation is always intact. If you can build friendships that can last a long time, lot longer than your cricket career, then you walk away from the game really happy."
If the myriad backdrops aren't enough, flying around to play cricket also brings the task of having to forge relationship with players of all kinds, and be in sync with varied kinds of coaching staffs. But all that, if McCullum is to be believed, is 'easy' thanks to his love for playing cricket and creating relationships with different people. And at RCB, the former New Zealand skipper is finding a lot of 'calm'.
"It's easy because I enjoy playing cricket. I love playing in a team, the camaraderie, playing with different people, the friendships and relationships you create with different people. Once you realise that, then you go into a team with a lot of positive energy. Sometimes it doesn't work out. I've been in teams which hasn't won a trophy and I have been in teams where we have won tournaments. For me, there is always a fine line on how the results go, but one thing that you can control is the environment you create.
"That's something I like about this franchise, they are very calm, very muted and very determined to try and achieve success. They also treat you fantastically well as a person and offer an opportunity for you to go out there and express yourself," McCullum said.
(CRICBUZZ)
