Captaincy feud with Ross Taylor a bad stain for New Zealand cricket, admits Brendon McCullum
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Almost seven years after Brendon McCullum replaced Ross Taylor as New Zealand’s captain across all formats, the former has admitted that it has remained a black mark on their record book. After Mike Hesson was appointed the head coach in 2012, Taylor was asked to step down from captaincy.
Former New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum, under whom the team played their first-ever World Cup final, recently opened up about his unintentional dispute with teammate Ross Taylor.
On Friday, Baz opened up about the time when he had to take over Ross Taylor as captain and that ended up in a fallout between the two. After Daniel Vettori stepped down as captain in 2011, the board had conducted a public process to elect the new skipper and as much as Brendon McCullum wanted to be captain, Taylor had bagged the job and that created unwanted tensions between the two cricketers.
“That’s exactly what it was, shocking. And it put some pressure on my friendship and relationship with Ross. I have a lot of development and under-age cricket with Ross. I was the captain of the U19 team and Taylor was my vice-captain. We’ve always got on really well,” McCullum said, in an interview on Sky Sports Podcast.
“We had to go for an interview for the job. It was about presenting the map for the future of New Zealand cricket to a panel. I don’t really know what we were doing. If I had my time, I would’ve said ‘No I’m not going to come and go through the process, you appoint Ross as captain and then we’ll see what unfolds from there’”, he added. “It’s a bad stain for New Zealand cricket and put pressure on Ross and me. Then it led me to eventually take over the captaincy from Ross.”
After Taylor was appointed the captain in 2011, things were rocky for the team and himself. Eventually, Mike Hesson was selected as coach but Taylor and he did not get along. Eventually, Taylor was removed as New Zealand’s captain, and McCullum eventually replaced him. Even though they had the option of split captaincy, Taylor had refused to do so and went on an exile. However, he came back and things were better and McCullum believes that they have moved on from it.
“I was asked if I wanted to take over the role of New Zealand captain in all three formats. So initially, I told them I would get back to them. I needed to think long and hard thought it. I knew it would be a major controversial decision. I knew it could have major ramifications on NZ Cricket, but also on my time as a player. I sat down with my wife, and said ‘you are the best equipped to do it, if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out, but you’re the best equipped to do it’. So I gave them a call, and said I would do it,” McCullum revealed.
“Ross had turned down the Test captaincy role. I don’t know what happened the time. There was a lot of controversy. New Zealand Cricket has moved on from that time now.”
