McCullum's drive will be crucial to England's great revolution

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.

- Will Macpherson

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.

All this got worse when, on the first day of McCullum's first Test in charge, he opted to bat against South Africa in Cape Town, and New Zealand were bowled out for just 45 - a depth even the England team he is now taking over are yet to plumb.

McCullum came to know that day as ground zero.

He was felt to embody some of the issues with the team. He was unashamedly brash, an early son of T20 who smashed 158 on the IPL's very first night and made international T20's second-ever century. He liked a drink, a a punt and had an occasionally sharp tongue.

But he is a fiercely-proud New Zealander. Among his various tattoos is a fern, the symbol of the Blacks Caps, on the left side of his chest, just by his heart (which is a nice fit with the Maori ink of the England captain he will now link up with, Ben Stokes). He is from south Dunedin, where the wind blows in hard from Antarctica, breeding the residents tough. And, at 31, he had matured, and had a vision.