When Brendon McCullum was appointed New Zealand captain in 2012, the great Kiwi batter and thinker, Martin Crowe, tweeted, then deleted, that he had burned his national team blazer in disgust.
Crowe was a mentor of the man McCullum replaced, Ross Taylor, but the mood across New Zealand cricket was barely sunnier. In all three formats, the Black Caps were way down the rankings and, to make matters worse, they were seen as whiny, arrogant and inauthentic. Always the All Blacks’ much littler brother, they were in danger of drifting into national irrelevance.
