Brendon McCullum stood out with his explosive batsmanship and inspiring captaincy during New Zealand’s run to the 2015 World Cup final and in the English summer that followed. He was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year the following spring.

Two vignettes from New Zealand’s early-season tour of England offered telling glimpses of their captain. With his team 1-0 down in the Tests, and in trouble on the first day at Leeds, Brendon McCullum drove his first delivery, from Stuart Broad, high and handsome over cover for six. Then, at Chester-le-Street, moments after England had clinched a raucous one-day series win, McCullum could be seen chatting amiably with Eoin Morgan – two captains united by the thrill of the game, the victor indistinguishable from the vanquished.

Of the first-ball six, McCullum says with an engaging frankness: “I don’t know what was going on inside my head. We hadn’t really had time to recalibrate our defensive game for the Tests, so I decided to play almost as if it was Twenty20: watch the ball, react to it, and see what happens.” And the bonhomie? “Both sides played the whole tour in the right spirit. It was one of the most enjoyable series I’ve been part of. Some good relationships were struck up. That’s how cricket should be played – win, lose or draw.”

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In the event, New Zealand lost more games (five across the three formats) than they won (three). But what lingered was an enviable combination of bravado and goodwill – embodied by McCullum and embraced by his teammates. England supporters were left wondering whether the two Tests allocated to New Zealand, and the five to Australia, were the wrong way round. As a batsman, McCullum was hardly prolific: he did reach 35 in six of his ten international innings during the tour, but did not go past the 55 he made in the second innings at Leeds. But he was never dull, failing to hit at least one six in only three of those innings. And he led by example: at Headingley, New Zealand racked up more than 800 runs at nearly five an over.

An English summer has rarely witnessed a more popular touring captain. For Brendon Barrie McCullum, born in Dunedin on September 27, 1981, it was always going to be sport. He and brother Nathan, less than 13 months his senior and a future international team-mate, would hang around the dressing-room of the local Albion club, where dad Stuart – an Otago batsman himself – was a prominent figure.

He could have been pinched by rugby. McCullum was once picked as flyhalf for South Island’s secondary school side ahead of Dan Carter, who went on to become rugby union’s leading international points-scorer. And, after being selected for New Zealand’s one-day side at the age of 20, McCullum remembers a phone call from Richard Hadlee the day after a training session with the Southern rugby team. Hadlee advised him against a repeat. “Yeah,” said McCullum. “He was a bit grumpy.”

Then came the trip to England, where New Zealand’s sledge-free, smiling approach felt like the enactment of a philosophy, not a PR stunt. “We probably won some fans around the world because of the way we carried ourselves,” says McCullum. “That kind of thing can be hard to quantify.”

By the time he returned to London to testify in the Chris Cairns perjury trial in October, it was in the knowledge that his reputation would be able to withstand cross-examination. And, in December, he could announce his plans to quit the international game after a home Test series against Australia in February 2016 armed with the comforting realisation that “I had played on for a year longer than I thought I would.” Typically, he signed off with a 54-ball century, the fastest in Test history.

There is one slight problem. He loves nothing more than a quiet beer at the bar, yet the new IPL franchise that signed him up for the 2016 tournament is based in Rajkot, in the dry state of Gujarat. “Could be interesting,” he laughs. With McCullum, it has rarely been anything else.

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