14 years after maiden hundred Brendon McCullum talks about impact of IPL on tournament anniversary
India Today
The current KKR head coach sat down with his teammate from the game - David Hussey, and talked about what impact the tournament has had over the years.
The Indian Premier League celebrates its 15th birthday today, on Monday, 18 April. This day, 14 years back, on the inaugural day of the tournament, a young New Zealander named Brendon McCullum set world cricket on fire, hitting 158 runs in the first ever innings of the league. Till this day, it is KKR’s only hundred in the cash-rich tournament.
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Brendon McCullum, sat down with David Hussey and reminisced about the game for the Indian Premier League website. Hussey - his KKR teammate from the game in 2008 and current coaching staff for the same franchise, took McCullum through the memory lane asking him how it felt to look back on the achievement.
The right hander stated that it was all a bit of a blur, but revealed that none of the players at that moment realised how big the IPL would become.
"None of us or anyone in general realised how big this tournament was going to become. That night we all found out what this tournament means to all the people that follow cricket in this country - India and also around the world. Ya, so it was nice to play a small hand in that," the KKR head coach said.
When asked about how he was feeling at that time in the crease, McCullum spilled the beans and said that he was very embarrassed in his first few balls after failing to score a single run from them. McCullum had walked in with a reputation of being a swashbuckler, but had found it difficult to get going.
“I do remember being 0 off 8 balls to start and my mind was ticking thinking, 'gee I've really made a real embarrassment of myself here.' But then I guess it was just a little bit of fate and things were written in the stars, got a bit of luck to get underway and then sort of thought that I'm going to keep swinging here and thankfully a few of them came off.”
