Mumbai: Brendon McCullum has finally shed light about his equation with former New Zealand skipper and ex-teammate Ross Taylor. The swashbuckling Kiwi batsman, in his recently published autobiography ‘Declared’ has minced no words as he discusses how Taylor’s lack of leadership skills led to mistrust between the two and hampered the New Zealand side.
The news comes at the time when Ross Taylor and the New Zealand side are struggling in India.
After Daniel Vettori stepped down as New Zealand captain in 2011, Taylor was picked, ahead of McCullum, to lead the New Zealand side via a “public” process where both (Taylor and McCullum) were asked to present their cases. McCullum also criticises the process in his book saying it made no good to “our relationship, or any team with the two of us in it".
The cracks begin to appear in Taylor and McCullum’s relationship during the West Indies tour in 2012 when the latter, who was initially rested for the shorter format was asked to rush to Caribbean and lead the team after Taylor got injured. While McCullum managed to reach West Indies before the third ODI, he was told Kane Williamson, who led the side in the first two of five-match ODI series, would lead New Zealand for the sake of continuity.
The New Zealand fared horribly on the tour which also was the last series for John Wright (coach) who did not enjoy a good relationship with John Buchanan, who worked as a Director of Cricket at NZC.
McCullum, as reported by ESPNCricinfo, writes: "Either Ross was highly resistant to my captaining the team and leant on Wrighty (John Wright) to change his mind, or it was just an organisational cock-up by Wrighty. The rest of the tour suggested the latter, because much of it was a shambles."
Mike Hesson’s appointment as the new coach of New Zealand coach further hampered the Taylor-McCullum equation. McCullum clarifies that while he and Hesson were friends, he had suggested Australian Matthew Mott’s name for the coach’s role.
"It seemed to me that, right from the start, Ross was suspicious of Hess's motives. So instead of taking Hess on his merits, Ross seemed already closed to him. I knew there had been a bit of talk behind the scenes after Hesson's appointment, and that some were seeing a conspiracy,” writes McCullum.
"It wasn't a very complicated scenario they were pushing: that my mate Stephen Fleming had influenced the selection board to give the coaching job to my other mate Mike Hesson, whose ultimate goal was to replace Ross as captain with me. One problem with that narrative was that I had recommended Matthew Mott to the selection panel, but details like that tend to spoil a good conspiracy theory, and as events unfolded, it was clear that logic would play an ever-diminishing role," adds McCullum.
Despite the tension between Taylor and Hesson, McCullum felt that the former did his best to help the latter.
"Time and again on what became a long grind of a tour, with changes of format and players around the core group coming and going, Mike set up a lot of meetings as a group, trying to provide the perfect forum for Ross. Wrighty had never done that for him -- the only opportunities Ross got to talk to the team would be during emotional moments in games, when he'd start yelling and shouting,” says McCullum.
"At these meetings, Mike would canvass everyone's thoughts, and then try to hand it back to Ross to synthesise what was out there, tell us the way he wanted to go forward, put his stamp on it. All Ross had to say was, 'Thanks lads, that's awesome and this is the direction we're going based on your thoughts. I'm the skipper, this is what we're doing and I need you all to buy into it. Ross would say nothing. Not a word. What the hell was he thinking? I had no idea.”
"Ross is a reasonably trusting guy in most circumstances, so someone must have been telling him to watch his back. Whatever, he put the shutters up against Hesson. A quiet guy at the best of times, going further into his shell didn't help -- he'd surface with angry outbursts, instead of a coherent plan."
Things worsened as the Kiwi side finished last in World T20 held in Sri Lanka and had to wait there as they were to play a Test series. Frustrated with the poor results and lack of leadership from Taylor, some of the team-mates asked McCullum, who was then the vice-captain, to speak with Taylor.
“I got caught in the middle of the situation of a captain who wouldn't talk to his coach or his team. I was keeping my powder dry in the team environment, trying to be the supportive vice-captain, but behind the scenes I became increasingly frustrated as I watched the Black Caps spiral downwards.”
Things continued to go downhill after New Zealand lost the first Test in Galle and McCullum could not hold himself back and had a go at Taylor.
“The atmosphere in the changing room after that loss at Galle was awful, and I picked up on a fair bit of animosity towards Ross. The team was finally imploding. I decided things had gone far enough and asked Ross to come into the dunnies out the back with me.”
“I said to him, 'This is your effin' team, mate. You need to grab it by the scruff of the neck and I will help you along the way, otherwise we're going to lose our way completely.”
McCullum was then asked whether he will lead the team in the shorter formats the game. He bought some time from NZC before making a decision. He later came to know that Buchanan and Hesson were going to ask NZC to relive Taylor of his captaincy duties post Sri Lanka series.
McCullum said he was still pondering over Fleming’s advice of not to take up the captaincy. But then NZC told him that Taylor has refused to continue leading the side in the longer formats. What it meant was that the captaincy of the Kiwi side across formats was up for grabs.
"I was carrying too much baggage now to hang around if someone else was captaining the side. Ross was always going to carry on, and the new captain could do without having me there too."
"And the fact that I hadn't been astute enough to work out that applying for the captaincy wasn't the right thing to do -- and, worse, I'd willingly engaged in that process -- proved I wasn't ready for it. But neither was Ross. He'd made the same mistake. He was younger than me and, I believe, no more ready for the captaincy than I was. And he was just as compromised by New Zealand Cricket's decision to have a public selection process. What happened next made us both a lot wiser -- and certainly older -- but it gouged a rift between us that will probably never heal," concludes McCullum.
