Before the start of inaugural IPL, a brand line was coined by the organisers, “Eight teams, without any players, only warriors.” On the first day of IPL itself, they found a warrior-like performer in Brendon McCullum. Yes, there were cheerleaders and enough glitz and glamour surrounding the opening ceremony of the tournament. But the fireworks from McCullum’s willow against Royal Challengers Bangalore projected the tournament in iridescent colours to the paying public.
Incredibly, the first over of the maiden IPL didn’t have any of the fireworks that we have come to associate with a T20 game. The opening duo of McCullum and Saurav Ganguly pinched a couple of leg-byes, but neither of them could score a run off the bat. And then everything changed. Amid a loud din in the jam-packed Chinnaswamy stadium, McCullum proceeded to smack Zaheer Khan for 4,4,6,4.
A cricket connoisseur might have scratched his head a little bit when McCullum skipped down the deck to Zaheer and the resultant thick outside edge went over the third-man boundary. But the fast-paced format wasn’t about sticking to the edicts of batsmanship. Instead, it was about fours and sixes and, more importantly, entertainment.
It was now time for Ashley Noffke to turn his arm over. He was in the form of his life in Australian domestic cricket, having bagged 43 wickets at an average of just over 21 in the Sheffield Shield. But this was a different format, and soon his bowling was taken apart by McCullum. In particular, we stood in shock and awe as McCullum manufactured a hint of room to smack Noffke over covers with utter disdain.
Sunil Joshi wasn’t spared either. McCullum slog-swept him and subsequently charged down the pitch to thump another ‘DLF Maximum’, as sixes had been labelled back then. Cameron White’s brand of top-spinners also came under severe pressure as he went for 24 runs. Somewhere in the stands, when McCullum landed one of those towering sixes off White, Kolkata’s co-owner, Shah Rukh Khan, was seen jumping in joy. Not just the legend of Bollywood, but even the home side’s fans seemed to be enjoying the spectacle of an opposition batter dealing in sixes. It was virtually a party out there at the Chinnaswamy Stadium.
The IPL at 1000 Games – A Weird and Wonderful World
There weren’t just cross-batted heaves from McCullum’s willow, but a bit of innovation too. In the penultimate over, he walked across the stumps and neatly essayed the lap shot off Jacques Kallis. Eventually, after 90 minutes of mayhem, the Bangalore players would have had sighs of relief as the 20 overs were completed. The score reading an imposing 222 for 3.
It is true that a hardcore cricket fan would have witnessed McCullum charging down the deck or attempting laps in his formative years. For instance, in just his second ODI, a young McCullum had shown glimpses of his fearless brand of cricket when he swatted Shaun Pollock’s back-of-a-length delivery through midwicket in a tri-series game at the Gabba.
In fact, just a few months before the IPL began, McCullum had given an inkling that he could do something special on the big stage. In an rain-marred ODI played in Hamilton, McCullum had danced down the track and audaciously pulled James Anderson, England’s pace spearhead, for six. On that night in Chinnaswamy, McCullum went on to play enough of those pull strokes.
But that one IPL innings changed McCullum’s life forever. As he told Kolkata’s official website in 2020, “Dada (Ganguly) said, ‘Your life is changed forever’, and I didn’t quite know what he meant at the time, but (in hindsight), I 100% agree with him.”
That night, Brendon McCullum’s name became synonymous with cricket’s newest chapter. He also helped sow the seeds for brand IPL to be launched successfully. Some 15 years and 5490 days later, on the eve of IPL’s 1000th game, an entire nation continues to be spellbound by that same brand.