20th February, 2016 – one last time the all-time great wicket-keeper batsman from New Zealand has played the test match. What would be the mindset of the batsman who is playing his last innings, try to take his time to play the long-hours innings as this is only time he is getting the chance to play according to himself. Or even if the batsman wants to play with a defensive approach after the early hiccups into the line-up it won't be wrong.
When there is Brendon McCullum, you have to keep all these things into the trash box. Who has hardly believed in all these complexities, as for the one last time the swashbuckling batsman took charge and described quite potentially why he went down as the greatest of all-time in the history of cricket.
Against Australia when New Zealand was trailing by 1-0 in the 2-match test series and to make the situation more worse the hosts (New Zealand) have lost three wickets at the score of 32 runs. When walked in Brendon McCullum, who has received massive ovations from the crowd in the ground and Australia team in his last test match, along with Steve Smith the captain of Australia back then.
Although Brendon McCullum has announced his retirement in 2015 December out of nowhere he assured his last couple of games across the formats would be against Australia in February 2016. New Zealand has won the ODI series by 2-1 in Chappell-Hadlee Trophy. But with the start of the test series, it went all wrong for hosts, they lost the first test match by 52 runs and an innings which was the 100th test match of Brendon McCullum. Coming into the second test match, New Zealand has already lost its three wickets early losing the toss. Kane Williamson was at the crease who was joined by captain himself Brendon McCullum. Like the first test match, Brendon McCullum looked little out of touch in the first few deliveries but as time went past he has cleared the intentions with some surreal hitting all around the corners of the ground.
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The game resumed after lunch with Brendon McCullum on 37 runs off 18 balls and soon after Kane Williamson was caught by Steve Smith on the delivery of Mitchell Marsh. Then walked in Corey Anderson to rescue his side with Brendon McCullum who was caught by Mitchell Marsh but James Pattinson had overstepped and Australia Celebrations were turned into all gone.
From there, Brendon McCullum never looked back and destroyed the bowling attack of Australia and both have added on 179-run partnership for the fifth wicket (that was the second fastest in the history of cricket in terms of balls they have faced).
The moment all were waiting for arrived when Brendon McCullum smashed the fastest test hundred in just 54-ball to break the record of Viv Richards and Misbah-ul-haq 56-ball hundreds. In the same test match, he broke the record of most sixes smashed by the batsman (107), the previous record was of Adam Gilchrist with 100 sixes.
It was the second highest run-score by a New Zealand batsman in his last test match. The Brendon McCullum innings came to an end at 145 runs off 79 balls which featured 21 fours and 6 sixes. Although New Zealand has lost the test match by 7 wickets but Brendon McCullum innings made this final test match more entertaining and memorable.
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