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New Zealand Cricket (NZC) will be faced with another availability conundrum with the Indian Premier League keen to leverage the superstar status of Brendon McCullum.
The blazing batsman lent instant credibility to the money-soaked tournament by smashing 158 not out in the opening match for his Kolkata Knight Riders on April 18. The Herald on Sunday understands that phone calls have taken place between tournament co-founder Lalat Modi and NZC with view to keeping McCullum on for another two or three games. NZC chief executive Justin Vaughan said the IPL was keen to maximise McCullum's talents but the May 1 arrival date in England had been agreed upon "and I think everybody was comfortable with that".
However with Kolkata now odds-on to make the semi-finals after winning their first two matches - they played Stephen Fleming and Jacob Oram's Chennai Super Kings again late last night - an interesting scenario could take place.
The semi-finals and finals are scheduled to take place in Mumbai from May 30 to June 1. New Zealand have a scheduled extended break between the second and third tests from May 27 to June 5, with only a low-key three-day match against Northamptonshire scheduled in between.
That would give McCullum, whom the Knight Riders would be desperate to see back, time to fly to India and back again to join the squad in Nottingham before the final test.
It would again be an unpopular move with cricket purists but one Vaughan did not dismiss out of hand. "I'd leave it up to John [Bracewell] but it seems pretty unlikely," he said. "If it was between the tests and the one-day series perhaps, but I'd say it's pretty unlikely in this scenario," he said.
McCullum is now a bona fide star in the subcontinent. After his opening match heroics he was apparently taken aside by captain Sourav Ganguly and warned that his life would never be the same again.
New Zealand, shorn of the five IPL players, arrived in England on Friday to a lukewarm response. Cricinfo wrote: "Since time immemorial, the success of a touring side has had a direct correlation with the cohesiveness of the players... but on the face of it, this situation is as divisive as they come."
