New Zealand coach Mike Hesson (left) and captain Brendon McCullum during the nets at Headingley in Leeds. (Reuters)

By Mike Selvey/The Guardian


It has been referred to before in these columns but when it comes to Brendon McCullum it is hard to look beyond Ferdinand Foch who, during the first Battle of the Marne in 1914, is said to have sent a message to Marshal Joseph Joffre. “My centre is giving way,” it read, “my right is retreating, situation excellent, I am attacking.”
McCullum probably does not have this epigram pasted inside his cricket case but there is little doubt it is an ethos to which he subscribes. Why defend when you can attack?
Now I bow to no one in my admiration for McCullum, his attitude, and the manner in which he manages – through his credo – to instil a confidence in his bowlers that a more reticent approach might not bring.
He is by a distance the best captain in international cricket and one of the best I have ever seen, although I would venture that he is much more at home with the vagaries of white-ball cricket. There have always been look-at-me-aren’t-I-clever captains, yet McCullum’s field placings are not what people like to call funky but rather everything appears to have real, proactive rationale.
The way that McCullum, and indeed Alastair Cook, opted away from what might be termed a more pragmatic approach on what was a terrific pitch contributed to a first Test that simply bounded along: 1,610 runs were scored, more than any other match at Lord’s, and at a rate that brought more than 370 per 100 overs.
Only once before, 80 years ago, have England scored 350 in a day twice in the same match and there cannot be a single person attending any of the five days who felt short-changed by what they saw.
If McCullum’s New Zealand played as we might have expected then England, still under Cook but with Paul Farbrace as head coach, were a revelation. Farbrace and Trevor Bayliss may prove an inspirational combination.
However, aside from the splendid entertainment on offer (which is no small consideration, of course) it is worth looking at what some of the attacking actually produced. Was it in fact counterproductive for much of the time, with resources of more value elsewhere?
Consider this, for example. For most of the time his seamers were operating, McCullum had in place at least three and sometimes four slips, even – or to be more precise particularly – when England were in the process of rebuilding their first innings.
In fact, had he not done so, the brickbats would have been flying. In setting such a field, he was encouraging his seamers, correctly, to pursue a full length and by contrast avoid the prospect of cross-bat shots. As it happened, England generally adopted much the same philosophy for which Cook, derided so often for supposed “negativity”, received plaudits. But then look at the scorecard. There were 40 wickets taken in the match.
In the first England innings, Tim Southee caught Gary Ballance at third slip, and in the second, Adam Lyth in the same position. But although seven catches went to the wicketkeepers BJ Watling and Tom Latham, these were the only chances that went to slip from the pacemen despite their ever-presence.
For Cook, during the nine hours of his second-innings 162, three slips were a constant companion, and often a short extra-cover. It was obvious, though, that Cook’s gameplan involved not driving at all, something made all the more redundant with the latter placing. Indeed, there would have been more chance of him playing the shot had the entire offside been left open. Clever fields are only clever when they produce a result.
The story with England is not entirely dissimilar, with no slip catches taken in the first New Zealand innings (a couple of chances missed) and one only, by Ballance in Jimmy Anderson’s first over, in the second. So while the threat of a catch was always there, it scarcely eventuated – just three slip catches from 281 overs that the pacemen delivered.
Yet make that rationale during the game (OK this is hindsight, I appreciate, although McCullum had little success with it during the World Cup) and the accusations of negativity would have rained down. In fact, I believe that McCullum’s instinct to attack, attack and attack some more in terms of his fields was instrumental in allowing Joe Root and Ben Stokes (who clearly also buys into Foch’s thinking) to get away; Root in particular milked runs at will.
Most obviously this applied when the New Zealand off‑spinner Mark Craig was bowling. This is a man very much feeling his way into Test cricket who, I would suggest, needs protection, yet some of the fields to which McCullum asked him to bowl were not those to which Graeme Swann at his peak would operate. A spinner needs to feel in control, to have time, and certainly not feel the pressure to have to make something happen.
At one point there was obvious disagreement between bowler and captain and it is hard to blame Craig. No one wants in any way to discourage the overall premise on which the first Test was played – it will go down as a classic. But alongside the words of Foch, it could be prudent to put those of Kenny Rogers in The Gambler: “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em …”