In this edited extract from his book, Brendon McCullum talks of the vexed issue of club v country.
The first Indian Premier League caused a dirty little firestorm that I would have seen coming if I had given it more thought.
Club versus country is an issue that has troubled professional sport through the ages but one that had never really bothered cricket - until the IPL came along.
From a New Zealand perspective, the first real sign that Twenty20 was going to leave an indelible mark on international cricket came before a ball was bowled in the inaugural IPL.
There had been some talk that we were caught unawares by the IPL contracts, that we thought they were lump sum figures, but I always knew the contracts were pro rata - pay for play effectively. So as soon as the dates for the IPL were released it was obvious there was going to be a bit of to-ing and fro-ing over when we - Dan Vettori, Jake Oram, Kyle Mills, Ross Taylor and I - should join the tour in England.
To me it seemed obvious: New Zealand Cricket had pushed so hard for us to be involved in the IPL, they needed to maximise our exposure there while achieving the difficult balance of not jeopardising our preparation for the test series against England.
My apprehension about turning up at the same time as the other guys was that for no other tour do we have that sort of extended preparation. It seemed excessive. There was a traditional one-day opener at Arundel before three first-class lead-in matches.
I know full well that an England tour is different, but people also have to realise the game itself was on the cusp of a massive change. Yes, England tours used to be even longer, but back in the day you weren't expected to play upwards of 10 tests a year, countless one-day internationals and, new into the mix, a range of Twenty20 internationals.
New Zealand Cricket Players' association manager Heath Mills knew there would be derision for those that believed the IPL four were putting themselves ahead of their team-mates.
Mills: "I think what people fail to grasp is that cricket is not the same now as it was 20 years ago, even 10 years ago. It's changed significantly and the most fundamental change is that we play so much more international cricket, 10 or 11 months in the year. International teams by and large play very few warm-up fixtures when they go on tours and in some cases none at all.
"The fact is we still had four warm-up games, three of them first-class matches, and our IPL players were allowed to turn up 10 days late. I understand the emotional and sentimental arguments, that it was not how things were done in the past, but it was absolutely the right decision for the situation at the time.
"Remember New Zealand Cricket wanted to have our guys playing in the IPL as well. We of all countries were most at risk of losing players to the ICL - as you could see by the likes of Bond, Lou Vincent, André Adams, Daryl Tuffey all signing - because we can't offer our players the sort of money they can earn in other countries. So having players in the IPL was incredibly important to us as it meant they could earn at the level of their peers around the world while still holding on to national contracts and playing for New Zealand."
Was the extra money we would accrue by staying in India for longer a major factor? Yes, it was. There's no point denying what is obvious, but it certainly wasn't the only factor.
I was absolutely loving the IPL. It was a fantastic opportunity and I turned up to England totally fresh, excited about cricket and ready to get stuck in. Not having a diet of four-day cricket did not seem to affect me either because I went out and scored 90-odd in the first innings of the first test at Lord's. I wasn't immune to the criticism. I understood it to a large degree. New Zealanders were concerned about how it was going to affect the team, and in England they were pretty dismissive because we lost and that was given as a fairly convenient excuse as to why we performed so badly.
Not everybody was wise after the fact, it has to be said. On the eve of the first test at Lord's former England captain Mike Atherton used his column in The Times to launch a blitzkrieg offensive on Dan Vettori.
So, put yourself in Daniel Vettori's shoes this morning. How are you feeling? A touch nervous, surely, with the test not far away. A little apprehensive, perhaps, given the callow nature of your top six. Unprepared, too, I should imagine ...
It has been a low-key start to the tour. To say that your team have flown under the radar would be to exaggerate the interest. Not that the lack of interest has been a bad thing. It has meant precious little comment on your decision to play for Delhi Daredevils in the Indian Premier League instead of braving the first two chilly weeks of May in England.
Not only you, of course, but your vice-captain, too, and three other senior players. About half your test team, in other words. A little odd, that. How do the rest of your boys feel? Jealousy is never a good thing in a team sport ...
You did not have to accept the captaincy of your country, just as New Zealand did not have to accept to play four warm-up matches. But to accept and then turn up with just over half a team is downright rude.
We all read that. We couldn't avoid it.
Worse still, Dan had to go out and toss the coin with Michael Vaughan and who was out there in the middle, microphone in hand ready to interview the captains? Michael Atherton, acting in his role for Sky in the UK.
Atherton's words hurt Dan. He might brush it off but he cares deeply about his standing in the game.
I believe Dan acts pretty much the way he should at all times. He is a great advertisement for New Zealand Cricket and he carries himself impeccably. For him to be challenged about his dedication to the cause was... well, it was just plain wrong.
His response was pretty emphatic. He took a five-wicket haul at Lord's and repeated that at Old Trafford, so his commitment on the field couldn't be questioned.
Part of the criticism directed at Dan was no doubt The Establishment trying to assert its primacy. There was quite a bit of anger on the English side, almost a 'how-dare-you' way of looking at things.
It wasn't ideal but in a lot of ways we did the cricket world a favour.
This issue wasn't going to disappear. It was always going to be vexed, particularly when you have players in half the cricket world - New Zealand, Sri Lanka, West Indies, Pakistan and Bangladesh - earning considerably less than those in England, Australia, South Africa and India.
Soon after we toured there was talk of England players joining IPL franchises, foregoing traditional county contracts, and leaving in time to get back for home tests. You can imagine how that went down over there.
Doing something new is not always popular, is it?
Closer to home, Dan, Brendon and the IPL crew were getting grief from a more familiar fellow - Sir Richard Hadlee. He expressed dismay that New Zealand was turning up to England without their best players and he repeated his reservations in his autobiography Changing Pace.
I believed it was fundamentally wrong that we arrived in England missing five of our players for the practice games and lead-in to the test series. England is the tour of tours and we were embarrassing ourselves by not having the captain, vice-captain and some of our senior players in England to prepare for the series. Has any team ever done this?
It frustrates me a bit when past players stick the boot in, whether it's big issues like this or just form issues.
They should know how hard everybody is trying, how disappointed they are when it doesn't work out, how much pride they take in playing for their country.
They, more than anybody, should reserve some admiration for guys who are struggling but still go out there and put their balls on the line. But, no, they're the first ones in line to kick the guys in the nuts again.
I found myself in the middle of another club versus country row when Andrew Flintoff decided to forgo an England contract to become a 'freelance' cricketer. For some reason IPL commissioner Lalit Modi, in an Australian newspaper, singled me out as a reason he couldn't do it.
That was a bit of a head scratcher and it all stemmed from a story in the New Zealand Herald that revealed the IPL players in the Black Caps had delayed signing their 2009-10 NZC contracts.
My situation was unique because I felt I had unfinished business from IPL II. The fact that the tournament did not pan out the way I envisaged it had not sat well with me. I desperately wanted to turn it around. That thought had been lurking in my mind since the last ball was bowled in IPL II.
I must admit I came bloody close to not signing with New Zealand Cricket. I took a plane to Fiji with my wife Elissa for a holiday and to think about what cricket meant to me.
I didn't want to talk to the media about it and I didn't want to run into guys at the pub who would be happy to put their two cents worth in. I needed to talk it through with Liss and work out where I wanted to go in my career. At that stage I was a little mixed up. I had started to question how important cricket was to me and I was getting more and more frustrated when things, such as my captaincy of the Kolkata Knight Riders, did not pan out as I envisaged.
I needed to sit back and work out what I wanted to get out of the game.
This issue of signing, or not signing, my NZC contract, brought it to a head. I needed to give something up to understand it and in the end what I did not want to give up was my full and utter commitment to New Zealand. Instead I turned down the extra money the IPL offered and the chance to take full part in what I hoped was the turning around of the Kolkata Knight Riders' fortunes.
It's not just wanting to play for New Zealand either - that's no longer good enough for me. I want to play really well.
I want to play a big part in turning around our fortunes. That would give me the biggest kick of all. I want to win more games against Australia, to beat them in a test series. I want to beat England away.
I want to win tournaments, the World Cup. Why not?
Another goal I have is to be at the forefront of New Zealand changing the style of cricket they play. Too often we play a boring style, particularly in test cricket, and it hasn't got us anywhere.
I get a bit disappointed when I read that I "don't give a rat's arse about playing for my country", as one writer put it, but at the same time I refuse to let it embitter me. The only reason the inference that I have lost the passion to play for my country disappoints me is that I know the sacrifice I made to play for New Zealand. In what other industry would you be expected to take options that cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars?
Reproduced from Brendon McCullum: Inside Twenty20 (Hodder Moa), with Dylan Cleaver, $39.99 RRP on sale today.
