The making of McCullum the maverick: Sportsmail speaks to those who know the England coach best 

He has, along with captain Ben Stokes, transformed England’s Test team from no-hopers, after crushing defeats in Australia and the West Indies last year, to buccaneering pioneers on a mission to entertain and save the grand old format from extinction.

But how has Brendon ‘Baz’ McCullum, who had no previous first-class coaching experience before succeeding Chris Silverwood, let alone international, done it and how did he get here?

As McCullum prepares to coach England in a two-Test series in his native New Zealand, cricket correspondent Paul Newman looks into the making of the man and what makes him tick.

Eoin Morgan pauses as he seeks the right words to describe the attitude his close friend Brendon McCullum has brought to an England team suddenly and dramatically transformed into Test cricket’s great pioneering entertainers.

‘We’re brought up over here in a way where our default position in sport is “what if it fails?”,’ says the Irishman who transformed England’s white ball cricket.

England have won nine out of ten Test matches under new coach Brendon McCullum

Alongside captain Ben Stokes (left), the former New Zealand captain has transformed English cricket

‘But Baz seems to have grown up with a foundation of “this is going to work, so what if it works unbelievably well?”. He gets your mind thinking of the “unbelievably well” bit, so even if you fall short of that you still do really well.’

No-one knows McCullum better than Morgan. The pair have been best friends since playing in the IPL together with Kolkata 11 years ago and it was to the Kiwi, always brimming with confidence and the most positive outlook on life imaginable, that Morgan turned for inspiration when launching the England limited-overs revolution, from the rock bottom of the 2015 World Cup to the famous peak of the 2019 World Cup triumph.

‘As soon as he took the England job I knew he would have a significant impact because, having played with him and been close friends with him over the years, the level of confidence he gives you as a person is immense,’ Morgan tells Sportsmail.

‘Baz has an amazing outlook not only on sport but on life as well and the only thing that has come as a little bit of a surprise is how quickly things have changed for England.

‘If you hadn’t watched the Test team for the last few years you’d think “geez, they must have spent a lot of time together building confidence and trust and having a huge amount of faith in the changing room”, whereas actually it’s only been seven or eight months and to be able to build that so quickly is incredible.’

To understand the impact McCullum, now 41 and retired from international cricket for seven years after becoming one of New Zealand’s greatest players, has made on England you have to travel pretty much as far away from Lord’s as it is possible to get.

It is in the gritty southern New Zealand town of Dunedin, with its close-knit community rich in Scottish heritage, that McCullum grew up as the son of a hard- hitting Otago batsman named Stu and the younger brother of an equally cricket-mad sibling in Nathan.

Eoin Morgan, a close friend of McCullum said the only surprise of his coaching success was the speed of change

The first seeds of McCullum’s ultra-positive approach were sown in the midst of his cricket-obsessed family and at the established Albion club and Dunedin’s King’s High School, where the high-performance centre is now named after his family.

Darin Smith played with McCullum at Albion — ‘we often shared the gloves and also some partnerships’ — and is now deputy rector of the state school for boys, where McCullum’s philosophy was shaped and he is remembered fondly.

‘The McCullum family are synonymous with our school,’ Smith tells Sportsmail. ‘There are some people still here who taught Brendon and we’re all incredibly proud of him.

‘Brendon is so down to earth and often refers to his time here at King’s and being a boy from Dunedin who made it.

‘We hold on to that because we’re a small place and down here we fight for everything. It’s pretty special when someone from here does as well as Brendon.

‘Our school logo is a lion and he still considers himself a King’s lion. We get the message across to our boys that to be a lion you must be attacking and positive. Our motto is building men for life — we certainly helped build an outstanding man in Brendon.’

The 41-year-old enjoyed an illustrious playing career with New Zealand and scored over 14,000 international runs

By the time McCullum — known as Baz since his school days as a short form of his middle name Barrie — began playing first-class cricket for Otago, it was clear not only was he a special talent but also that outstanding man Smith describes.

Craig Cumming, who played with McCullum at Otago and later with New Zealand, takes up the story.

‘I moved from Canterbury to Otago when I was in my late 20s and at that time Brendon had just played for the New Zealand youth team against South Africa and scored three hundreds in a series all off 60 or 70 balls,’ Cumming tells Sportsmail.

‘In one of the first games I played with him we needed 450 to win on the last day and I always remember it because Brendon said “we’re going to go out and win this”.

‘We didn’t win and I think he got out third ball trying to charge a medium pacer. We were trying to save the game by that stage but he went out with that attitude and that’s how he has always been. He was only 18 or 19 at the time.’

The confident, slightly brash but always humble youngster — he dislikes the term ‘Bazball’ simply because he feels all the credit should be given to the players — quickly made a huge impression on a man who would become something of a mentor.

He was an early pioneer in T20 cricket and holds the record for the highest T20I score by a wicketkeeper

‘Even as a teenager his attitude was infectious,’ says Cumming. ‘He made you want to go and enjoy yourself.

‘If you didn’t do well he was always the first person to come and give you a beer at the end of the day to pick you up. He’d say “right, let’s get on and take things on again”. That’s always been Brendon’s way.

‘I always said that if Brendon told us the sky was pink we’d believe him, he’s that sort of person. He’s just full of life.

‘He loves to play and loves competing. He was never afraid of losing. He would say “what’s the big deal if we lose if we give ourselves a chance of winning?”.

‘I’ve known Brendon pretty much his whole adult life and he’s never changed. He’s always had an X-factor and that’s not just as a cricketer, it’s as a person too. He’s one of the most generous people you’ll ever meet. If he only had a dollar in his pocket and someone needed a dollar he would give it to them.

‘There’s no surprise when you see the impact he has on people because he’s always had that positivity about who he is and what he does every day from when I first met him.’

As a coach, McCullum led England to just their third ever series win Pakistan, and their first whitewash in the country

There is no doubting McCullum’s ability with the bat. He became the first New Zealander to record a Test triple century when he made 302 against India on the same Basin Reserve ground in Wellington where he will be wearing an England tracksuit for the second Test this month.

He was a pioneer in the game-changing Indian Premier League when he smashed an unbeaten 158 for Kolkata in the competition’s very first game in 2008.

And he bowed out of international cricket in remarkable style when he hit the fastest Test century of all-time, off just 54 balls, in his very last appearance, against Australia.

But it is as a leader that McCullum has really changed the game, although not before a pretty inauspicious start. He took over as New Zealand captain in controversial circumstances when he replaced an aggrieved Ross Taylor and saw his side bowled out for 45 by South Africa in his first match in charge in 2012.

‘It was a hard time for everyone on both sides of the fence,’ says Cumming.

‘Ross had a really tough time but the reason New Zealand got through it was because of the way Brendon is as a person.

In 2014, he became the first New Zealander to score a Test triple hundred when he hit 302 against India

‘He used his personality, positivity and outlook on life to galvanise the side and over time they built a really strong culture over who they were and what they were trying to achieve.

‘Brendon’s tactics and the way he thought about things brought about a huge amount of success.

‘The New Zealand public saw what they were trying to do and got onside with it and they became world leaders.

‘They played cricket that suited Brendon’s personality. They went out there and took teams on and became a mirror of Brendon as a person.’

Sound familiar? It was ‘Bazball’ with the Black Caps. But it did not go down well with everyone.

This reporter remembers a press conference ahead of the 2013 Ashes when I incurred the wrath of Australia’s Brad Haddin, a man who preferred to play his cricket in a rather more uncompromising and unfriendly way. For some reason I asked Haddin if he had noticed how New Zealand were playing and how nice it was for the game.

The coach also signed off his Test career by setting a new world record for the fastest Test century

‘Nice,’ he spat, angry incredulity etched across his face. ‘It’s not meant to be nice. It’s meant to be about winning.’

Yet it really was still about winning and often ruthlessly too. When New Zealand thrashed England in the 2015 World Cup in Wellington, the English white-ball game was at its lowest ebb.

They were rushed out for 123 and then saw New Zealand bludgeon their way to their target in just 12.2 overs before the floodlights were turned on, McCullum smashing 77 off just 25 balls.

But it was to become one of the most significant defeats in English history.

Morgan, the England captain humiliated by his opposite number and best friend that day, acknowledges the importance of that chastening experience.

‘It was by far and away the hardest game of cricket I ever played in but it became the cornerstone of what my captaincy and vision were built on,’ he says now.

He captained New Zealand in their thumping victory over England at the 2015 World Cup which helped facilitate the white ball revolution under Eoin Morgan

‘During our journey to the World Cup victory we would sometimes rewind the clock and say “what do we not want to be and what do we not want to be doing?” Wellington was the prime example of that.

‘We were so far off the mark and even if we’d played well New Zealand would still have blown us away. Brendon became my inspiration that day.

‘We had already formed a strong relationship by then. It wasn’t cricket to start with. We’re good mates because we enjoy a glass of wine, horse racing, rugby and other sports.

‘It became clear we were very much aligned with the way we felt the game should be going. We shared a vision of what the game could be down the line.’

It was Morgan who was a key factor in encouraging McCullum, the master of ceremonies at his wedding in 2018, to take on his biggest challenge, replicating his success with New Zealand in English colours. McCullum’s lack of coaching experience was never a factor.

The next challenge for McCullum and Stokes will be winning in New Zealand

He barely bothers with technical coaching anyway and seasoned observers of England practice have been taken aback by the Kiwi’s laissez faire approach to training and net sessions. It is all about creating the right atmosphere.

‘I’d spoken to Baz a number of times about him coming to join us and it was always going to be the Test side that he wanted to link up with,’ says Morgan. ‘That’s because he cares so much about Test cricket and wants to preserve it.

‘What he and Ben Stokes are doing not just for England but for the whole game is immeasurable. They are creating huge interest around them and creating new heroes. That should be the way forward.

‘They’re reaching a new pinnacle and creating a spectacle — they are being measured on that as opposed to results. Everyone wants to back a team that goes out and plays like the Test side at the moment and whether they win or lose they will have a lot of fans behind them.

‘The marker is so high for where they are going and it is only going in one direction.’

Next stop, after nine thrilling wins in just 10 Tests as coach so far, is McCullum’s New Zealand.