INDIAN PREMIER LEAGUE

IPL's opening act: The inside story

It was such a big occasion, and for the first six balls I just couldn't move my feet: Brendon McCullum.
It was such a big occasion, and for the first six balls I just couldn't move my feet: Brendon McCullum. ©AFP

Twelve years on from the match that has come to herald a new generation of cricket, one moment remains indelibly etched in the memories of Murali Kartik, Wasim Jaffer and Charu Sharma, three men who had eyes transfixed on Brendon McCullum from different vantage points around the Chinnaswamy Stadium. The night was still young on the 18th of April 2008 in Bengaluru - warm, muggy but full of possibilities.

To counter a clearly nervous McCullum, Zaheer Khan switched angles to round the wicket and got the third ball of his second over to straighten from an angle. The Knight Rider, who had lofted the previous two balls over mid-wicket, opted for an encore. The ball hit the outside half of his bat and sailed over third man for the first six of IPL history.

"He hit one shot off Zaheer - he tried to hit him over long on and the ball went to third man for a six - and everybody was shocked, because I thought he'd get holed out," Jaffer, part of the chosen XI tasked with stopping McCullum that day, recollects to Cricbuzz.

The world outside the confines of this inverted saucer on Bangalore's CBD was grappling to deal with the impending global financial meltdown. Inside it, Indian cricket had draped itself in new recession-proof threads. 'Cricketainment' - as Lalit Modi called it - had come to town with full pomp and hitherto unseen theatrics.

Laser shows, stilt walkers and the razzmatazz of song and dance descended on the Chinnaswamy. The roads leading to the famous ground were adorned with intimidating posters featuring Rahul Dravid, Jacques Kallis and Mark Boucher decked in the club's red and gold with the words "There are no players, only warriors" etched on them.

Where KKR strutted into town with their Bollywood pageantry, RCB found a Hollywood influence. Russell Crowe, the first cousin of New Zealand cricket legend and RCB COO Martin, suggested making the away dressing room 'a poor place for the soul'. So, the home team warmed up in a bright and beautiful room, a happy place to be, and the Knights were welcomed by a strategically neglected grey, dark and desperate space.

For Kartik, so accustomed to walking into a ground and beginning a fuss-free pre-match routine, these over-the-top embellishments were the first signs of an impending journey into the unknown.

For such a journey though, sometimes you need an explorer to chuck his compass away and follow his whim.

***

There were no indications that McCullum would turn out to be that explorer, even though just a month before the IPL opener, he had hammered a staggering 52-ball hundred for Otago in the State Shield final in Auckland.

'Be scared, be sh*t scared' - the throwaway line on the posters outside Eden Gardens had little to do with the then-introverted New Zealander. They were more in reference to what Sourav Ganguly, Chris Gayle and Ricky Ponting would unleash as a top-order trio. KKR had a one-week training camp in Kolkata, where nothing that flew off McCullum's bat stood out for Kartik. In fact, McCullum was not even supposed to begin the season as Ganguly's opening partner. Gayle's delayed arrival facilitated that jump up from No.4.

McCullum's form hadn't improved all the way up to the eve of the clash. After RCB wrapped up practice, Jaffer remembers staying back and watching KKR's nets session, along with Zaheer, and being most amused by what they saw.

"We were doing the nets the day before. Zaheer and I were sitting and watching KKR practice. McCullum was actually batting. And he was getting out to every second ball. Mostly clean bowled. And Zaheer was saying look how he is struggling, kitna kharaab khel raha hai. [How badly he is batting]."

***

 We realised the IPL was not going to be a hit and giggle. This was not where you just take the money and go home: Charu Sharma
We realised the IPL was not going to be a hit and giggle. This was not where you just take the money and go home: Charu Sharma ©AFP

On game day, a still-fidgety McCullum played out six balls without any conviction and found himself stranded on nought. Zaheer eventually offered him a couple of freebies, which made way for that misdirected six over third man.

Just like that, a fuse went off at the Chinnaswamy.

"I was pretty nervous at the start. It was such a big occasion, and for the first six balls I just couldn't move my feet. But with the short boundaries, I managed to get away with a few and it was just nice to keep going. I haven't been that nervous in international cricket for a long time. It was partly because of the hype around the game and some of the big names in the side with huge records. I guess you want to prove yourself and that adds to the nerves around," McCullum would later say.

For aficionados of proper cricket like Charu Sharma, sitting in that RCB dugout as the team's CEO, that shot may have yielded furrowed brows, frowzled reactions and frustration. Those three fs were soon to be replaced with fast, furious and fun.

"Baz just shut his eyes and swung at everything. It was ridiculous. He just played the knock of his life," Sharma begrudgingly recollects. "It is one of the worst memories of my life. Thanks a lot for bringing that up. Jesus Christ," he laughs.

Sharma uses the adjective 'ridiculous' multiple times over the course of his reminiscence. It is perhaps apt because once McCullum calmed his nerves, he unveiled facets to his batting that were unknown to the casual cricketing audience. A one-handed slog-swat off Sunil Joshi went sailing over the long on fence, and another six - off Zaheer - smashed into the newly installed speakers in the second tier above the fine leg boundary. The crowd, not yet partisan, guffawed and then roared as McCullum nonchalantly scooped a fast bowler over his left shoulder.

"I didn't think of Brendon like that [to be capable of such an innings]. I would have put Gayle into that bracket because of the way Gayle was," Kartik says. "I've played against Brendon in India-New Zealand games, but I would have never imagined Brendon would have played an innings like that. You have to remember in cricket, players do reinvent themselves in certain ways, people work on things they want to work on. I suppose that was Brendan 2.0 - when I played him he didn't have the shots that he had that day."

The memory Kartik is alluding to involves his previous encounter with the green-horned, Popeye-armed Kiwi. In an ODI at the old Lal Bahadur Shastri Stadium in Hyderabad, McCullum had limped to a 69-ball 31 in a 353 chase, showing no discernible hitting prowess.

Four years later too there was nothing that foreshadowed the extent of his batting evolution, like it did with Chris Gayle's 175 - the other barnstorming innings of the IPL, which Kartik viewed from a rink-side seat again.

"Don't think that 158 can ever be replicated," Kartik says. "Yes, Gayle did get 175 a few seasons later and I was part of that game and watched it as a member of the same team. I can actually say [for] 175, there was a build-up. This one had no giveaway. The day before 175, Gayle smashed me, Murali [Muttiah Muralitharan] and Daniel Vettori all over the Chinnaswamy in the nets. But this [McCullum's 158] gave us absolutely no indication."

***

"All along the way we kept saying, 'let's be patient, we'll chase 150... umm maybe 170'. But 240 [222]?," Sharma harks back to the dugout chatter.

RCB were hoping against hope that at some point through their first-half misery, that one stray McCullum misstep would have a player clad in red and gold at the end of it. They had already lost 12 gun overs to injury and unavailability of Anil Kumble, Dale Steyn and Nathan Bracken.

The dugout even assuaged themselves in the knowledge that one of their big-name imports, Cameron White, could deliver a fitting riposte in the chase. McCullum didn't just shatter the record for the highest individual T20 score - then held by White [141] - but also served the Australian a confidence-denting 24-run assault which he never recovered from.

As the innings played out on fast-forward mode, RCB's Jaffer was hit by a mid-match existential crisis of sorts, about his own standing as an opener in this new setting. "When somebody plays [like that] on Day 1 of IPL, your adrenaline rushes and you do want to play like that too. That doesn't happen so easily," says Jaffer, whose attempts to replicate McCullum's feat finished with a 16-ball 6 in the second half of the game.

Funnily enough, the contemplation was not restricted just to RCB. Amidst the delirium, Kartik felt both adoration and dread.

"I was actually thinking in the dugout, rather than enjoying, ye haal hone wala hai of all the bowlers in the IPL, that was my first thought to be very honest [this is the fate that awaits us bowlers]. If others are at the receiving end, this could be the same haalat [condition] of all other bowlers. I didn't know whether to be happy or feel 'oh this is what's going to happen from now on.'"

***

 'This is the new standard?. You got to be striking 100 off 50 balls and hitting 10-11 sixes?!'
'This is the new standard?. You got to be striking 100 off 50 balls and hitting 10-11 sixes?!' ©AFP

It is easy to brush off Shahrukh Khan's dance from the P2 stand, the after-match hug between McCullum and his idol Ponting as this excitable arm of big entertainment. But this was something else. You didn't shake hands with the victors and head home.

When you would otherwise have the solitude of a hotel room to lick your wounds after a 140-run shellacking, the athlete of this new era now had to honour his professionalism, even at a post-match party. An hour after checking into their rooms at the Windsor Manor hotel, the RCB players received calls from Sharma and the team manager asking them to "take a deep breath, have a shower" and head to UB City immediately.

"That first match of the IPL was a wake up call in terms of the bells and whistles much more so than the game," Sharma says. "It was a wake up call in terms of ownership, in terms of expectation, in terms of noise, in terms of the whole new fandom. This was not a hit and giggle. This was not where you just take the money and go home.

"This is where you'll be made to sweat for every rupee that you make because the ownership is going to come very hard in terms of expectations. The stakes were so high because every alternate day, if you win, the ownership could take you to cloud nine. And if you lose, you'll be buried under 100 tonnes of rubble. That was a wake up call, the seriousness of this all."

Sharma vividly recalls how the evening that began with so much joy and fervour, had so quickly turned sombre by the early hours of the next morning. This was only game 1 of 14 RCB were to play in the league stage, but when the ownership decided to attach its ego to the performance of the team on the day, negativity rushed in rather quickly. Triggered by McCullum, RCB spiralled to five defeats in their first seven matches and came to terms with pressures, the kind of which players weren't accustomed to before.

"After a certain number of matches we had a five-day gap. We had planned with Rahul [Dravid] two months in advance. We wanted to chill and unwind for three of those days - sort of a rest and repair," Sharma says. "We booked this resort in Madhya Pradesh which had some 25-30 rooms, just the team, no one else. We would do light physical training, go out and see the wildlife. Rest, recover and rejoice and then go attack the nets.

"Because the team started losing, the ownership executives said 'you are not pushing them to train harder... These guys are losing, they don't deserve rest. Make sure they are staying in the city that they're playing the next match in and prepare. They cancelled the R&R and told the team to whip themselves into better shape'."

***

1000 kms north-west of Bangalore, the Mumbai Indians squad had huddled up to watch this landmark fixture unfold on TV, hoping to get a cheat-sheet into what lay in store for the next two months, and the future. The bar, they observed, was set dauntingly high rather early.

"The first night when McCullum walks out and gets a 158 at Bangalore. And that just set the biggest precedent and the biggest tone I've ever seen in cricket really," Dominic Thornely says. "You just went 'this is the new standard?. You got to be striking 100 off 50 balls and hitting 10-11 [13] sixes an innings to be seen as a good innings.'

"It's fair to say that knock even now stands as one of the best T20 innings ever. He certainly set the tone and even our team watching the game on TV that night... We all watched and said we really have to bring our A game tomorrow."

As for McCullum himself, the 158 catapulted him to overnight stardom and 'changed his life'. It set in motion a career that largely followed in the personality of that knock - brash, unapologetic and full of oomph. He would imbibe all these qualities into his leadership, dragging with him a majorly soft-spoken cricket nation into its first World Cup final in 2015. And just like that, he'd storm off into retirement with the fastest Test hundred in tow.

It was that warm, muggy Bangalore evening, that first put him at the wheel. Cricket had just taken its most audacious step since the Packer series, and Brendon Barrie McCullum ensured that the stride was momentous and the match itself, a milestone.

There has been no turning back since, except longingly in nostalgia.

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