The coup that wasn’t – Brendon McCullum opens up about Ross Taylor’s ineffective captaincy

Brendon McCullum and his newly published autobiography have been doing the rounds in the cricketing world for some time now. With a few words on match fixing, Chris Cairns, and Lou Vincent, McCullum has seemingly broken his fences with current New Zealand batsman Ross Taylor. McCullum also went on to reveal how he inherited the captaincy from the 32-year old.

After McCullum was made skipper of the New Zealand side, the Kiwis made an unprecedented surge up the ICC World Rankings across all formats including a few wins on several overseas tours. Moreover, the fact of the matter remained that Ross Taylor was passive and was not a strong leader according to McCullum. In fact, the former Kiwi’s skipper has also written about this in his book under the chapter – ‘The coup that wasn’t’.

Brendon McCullum also brought former coach John Wright into the picture stating that the duo was responsible for their own downfalls.

“Either Ross was highly resistant to my captaining the team and leaned on Wrighty to change his mind, or it was just an organizational cock-up by Wrighty. The rest of the tour suggested the latter because much of it was a shambles,” McCullum’s autobiography stated.

Also read – Pakistan v West Indies, 2nd Test Review: Pakistan goes 2-0 up in the series

The 35-year old also did not hold back when he revealed an episode in Galle where they lost to Sri Lanka by a massive 10-wicket margin. McCullum was quoted by Cricinfo as saying, “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.’

He further went on to write, “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.”

Also read – Pakistan v West Indies, 2nd Test – West Indies Player Ratings