Aussies return to where Bazball was unofficially born

Before there was Bazball and the breathless reverence with which it's worshipped in some corners of the cricket world, there was just 'Baz'.

And seven years prior to Australia having their first run-in with England's crusading cult that acolytes claim re-imagines the Test game, they encountered 'Baz' who admits he was simply trying to belt every ball he faced to or beyond the boundary rather than launch some sort of eponymous revolution.

The scene of that brief but incandescent skirmish was Christchurch's bucolic Hagley Oval where Australia and New Zealand will meet for the final Test of the current Qantas Tour on Friday, and the occasion was Brendon 'Baz' McCullum's last game as an international player in February, 2016.

Rather like this week's upcoming fixture at which McCullum's captaincy successors Kane Williamson and Tim Southee will make their 100th Test appearances, the event carried a celebratory air even though Australia had completed a hefty win in the preceding match at Wellington.

In 2016, the visitors' winning margin at Basin Reserve was an innings and 52 runs which dwarfed the 172-run margin of last weekend but – as is expected eight years later - that was not sufficient to dull the expectation nor quell the national pride that accompanied the occasion.

McCullum had already assumed local legend status by leading his team to the previous year's World Cup Final against NZ's foremost sporting rival, and his standing swelled further when the Black Caps defeated Australia in a three-game ODI campaign to regain the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy prior to the 2016 Tests.

Further fanning jingoistic flames in the Shaky Isles, that white-ball win was achieved amid a measure of controversy – when Mitchell Marsh was adjudged caught from a rebound off his foot, in circumstances the Australians queried – which only added to the euphoria among NZ fans.

So by the time the Tests rolled around, New Zealand was in a state of parochial pageantry with McCullum masks distributed among crowds fans attending his farewell games at the Basin (where his penultimate Test was also his 100th) and at Hagley Oval less than a week later.

McCullum's centenary appearance might have been a fizzer, knocked over for a seven-ball duck and then a tortured 10 (off 31 deliveries) in Australia's hefty win in Wellington, but folks in his then-adopted home city of Christchurch already had an inkling of what might be in store.

In the inaugural Test staged in 2014 at the ground – on reclaimed parkland after large parts of Christchurch (including the former international cricket and rugby venue Lancaster Park) were levelled by the devastating earthquake three years earlier – McCullum clubbed the fastest hundred by a NZ batter.

That century, from 74 balls against Sri Lanka, came with NZ in early strife after being sent into bat on a lively Hagley strip and reduced to 3-88 shortly after lunch on day one.

But Australia's four-pronged fast-bowling attack of Josh Hazlewood, James Pattinson, Jackson Bird and Marsh (Mitchell Starc missed that tour recovering from ankle surgery) loomed as an entirely different prospect to Sri Lanka's modest seam and spin.

As such, when McCullum lost the toss and the Black Caps were again inserted and quickly crashed to 3-32, not even the most loyal mask-wearing fan could have imagined what would follow as the feisty skipper bustled his way to the wicket, bristling with intent if not belief.

As they had done for his ultimate ODI outing at Hamilton, the Australia team formed a guard of honour for their retiring rival, perhaps pointedly aware McCullum found the gesture touching but unnecessary such was his distaste for public adulation that might be interpreted as hubris.

His captaincy counterpart Steve Smith shook hands to congratulate McCullum on all that had come before, without explicitly wishing him well for what lay immediately ahead, and then watched powerless for the next two hours as the batting equivalent of a thrashing machine laid siege.

"It was an incredible innings," Smith recalled when asked about that day by cricket.com.au this week.

"He came out and just swung away, took the game on.

"That's the way Brendon played, he didn't really change the way he played with different scenarios.

"He just went about his business, and if they were in trouble he would take them on and try and dig them out, or if they were in front of the game to continue to take it on and try and build on that."

Despite – or perhaps directly because of – the dire circumstance confronting him, McCullum believed his best hope of survival was to swing hard, which is what he did at the second ball he received from Hazlewood whose first ten overs of the Test had yielded a miserly 1-11.

From what he later described as "an almighty, filthy slog" at that Hazlewood delivery, McCullum sent the ball spiralling over the head of Australia's slips cordon for a boundary that got him off the mark and set the tone.

He took 21 off the next over in a brazen counter-attack that should have ended immediately after lunch when, on 39, he carved a blazing drive through gully where Marsh plucked what the Australia allrounder described this week as "the greatest catch you'll never see".

As the ball screamed over his right shoulder, Marsh threw out one hand and understandably celebrated what would have become a viral sensation if it had not been soon revealed to come from a front-foot no-ball by Pattinson.

McCullum was two-thirds of the way to the NZ dressing room when the replay was shown on Hagley Oval's temporary big screen, at which point he spun on his heel and did not take his eyes from the turf underfoot until he got back to the crease where the assault was immediately resumed.

He swivel-pulled Pattinson's follow-up offering with such force that Hazlewood, on the boundary at deep backward square, momentarily lost sight against the grass-bank backdrop packed with fans on fold-up chairs and picnic rugs while watching through McCullum masks.

It bounced metres in front of him and struck him in the chest before rebounding over the rope, almost before the fast bowler could raise his hands in self-defence.

"You couldn’t relax anywhere you were fielding – fine leg, deep square, deep point, the ball was travelling at a million miles an hour, straight at you most times," Hazlewood recalled this week.

"There was a few little half chances here and there, but nothing that went straight down someone's throat unluckily for us.

"Amazing shots, we had the field spread everywhere, but he kept finding the gaps, hitting the ball hard and the wicket seemed to flatten out."

Charging at Bird next over and flat-batting him over long-on for six, McCullum reached 50 from 34 balls.

By the end of Bird's next over, he was 68 off 44 and Smith found himself deploying fielders to positions he hadn't previously realised existed.

"If someone's having a day like that, it's almost just like putting people where you think the ball was going to go," he said.

"Unfortunately, on that day, Brendon found ways to hit them in the gaps and get them away for four or six, but looking back that was probably a fun part of the challenge."

Although Smith and his bowlers found it tough to see any humour at the time.

As the NZ skipper picked up pace and the sun-soaked crowd upped their delirium, Hazlewood fired in a couple of attempted yorkers that both went scorching to the fence, then pulled back his length and McCullum almost swung himself off his feet trying to launch it beyond mid-wicket.

That miscued top edge sailed over keeper Peter Nevill's head and bounced once into the advertising boards, confirming to anyone still in doubt that omnipotent forces were on the Kiwi captain's side.

"At one stage we had fine leg, deep third man and a guy straight behind the keeper," Hazlewood remembered with a wry grin.

"We just couldn't get the depth quite right though, it was always in the gap."

After a couple of dot balls to start his 12th over, Hazlewood went for six and then a hat-trick of boundaries, the last of which carried McCullum to the fastest century recorded in Tests, off 54 deliveries.

It bettered a benchmark that had stood for almost 30 years, with West Indies' legend Viv Richards' 56-ball demolition at Antigua ironically coming at the expense of England given they would claim to have invented brazenly attacking five-day cricket under McCullum four decades later.

Asked at day's end if he was consciously stalking Richards' record, McCullum claimed to have no idea he was even close to that landmark because he was too busy "trying to hit every ball for four or six".

NZ piled on 211 from 24 overs between lunch and tea, with McCullum's luck running out on 145 (off 79 balls) when Nathan Lyon held a diving catch running in from the deep square leg boundary.

After their horror start to the much-anticipated day, the Black Caps were bowled out for a remarkable 370 from 65.4 overs an hour before stumps.

Even though it was achieved off barely two-thirds of a full day's play, it was the second-highest day one Test total Australia had conceded behind the 407 scored at the start of the fabled Edgbaston 2005 Ashes Test, when international cricket barely knew of McCullum or his radical game style.

The Black Caps scoring rate on that dazzling day at Christchurch of 93.9 runs per 100 balls faced remains the highest in the first innings of a Test for any team sent into bat, Bazball era included.

The next-best was McCullum's England outfit, coincidentally against New Zealand a year ago, when they rattled up 9(dec)-325 at the rate of 92.8 after Southee generously granted them first use of the Mount Maunganui pitch.

That opening day at Hagley eight years ago brought the fastest flood of runs by any team in the first innings of a Test until Ben Stokes's men helped themselves to 657 off 606 balls (108.4) at Rawalpindi on their tour to Pakistan, when Bazball first became a thing in 2022.

Having debuted in Tests just 14 months earlier, Hazlewood had never before encountered that level of batting aggression from an opponent, and certainly not witnessed the switch being instantly flicked from grim survival to all-out carnival.

And it wasn't solely McCullum, as his blueprint after NZ's top-order poked and prodded their way into strife was adopted by the batters who immediately followed him that day – Corey Anderson with 72 from 66 balls, B J Watling (58 from 57) and even tailender Matt Henry (21 from 12).

It was a full dress rehearsal for what England would retrospectively trademark as 'Bazball' and surely steeled McCullum's belief the best way to counter a world-class Test bowling attack was to ruthlessly and repeatedly try and hit them off their preferred lines and lengths.

"It's interesting, it might have planted the seed (for Bazball)," Hazlewood said this week, having experienced the 'new' phenomenon of batting belligerence against McCullum's England in last year's Ashes battle.

"At that point, it was probably the first time I'd seen it.

"I was only a dozen or so Tests in for me, and everyone had played pretty stock standard up until then.

"It was the first time a batter had really come at not just one bowler, but the whole group – spin, quick, hitting everything.

"It was quite amazing to watch."

Qantas Tour of New Zealand

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February 29 – March 4: Australia won the first Test by 172 runs

March 8-12: Second Test, Christchurch, 9am AEDT

Australia Test squad: Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Marsh, Michael Neser, Matthew Renshaw, Steve Smith (vc), Mitchell Starc

New Zealand Test squad: Tim Southee (c), Tom Blundell (wk), Matt Henry, Scott Kuggeleijn, Tom Latham, Daryl Mitchell, Glenn Phillips, Rachin Ravindra, Mitchell Santner, Ben Sears, Kane Williamson, Will Young.