McCullum 'best captain in world' but too aggressive at Lord's

Brendon McCullum, right, speaks to bowler Tim Southee during the fifth day of the first test match. Photo / AP

A leading English cricket writer believes Brendon McCullum's attacking policies are going too far.

Mike Selvey, a former England opening bowler, said McCullum's field placings allowed Joe Root and Ben Stokes to take the game away from New Zealand and exposed New Zealand's rookie test spinner Mark Craig.

"He is by a distance the best captain in international cricket and one of the best I have ever seen, (although) he is much more at home with the vagaries of white-ball cricket," Selvey wrote in the Guardian.

"Aside from the splendid entertainment...it is worth looking at what some of the attacking actually produced. Was it in fact counterproductive for much of the time, with resources of more value elsewhere..

"I bow to no one in my admiration for McCullum...(he inspires) a confidence in his bowlers that a more reticent approach might not bring.

"(but Craig) is a man very much feeling his way into test cricket...yet some of the fields to which McCullum asked him to bowl were not those to which Graeme Swann at his peak would operate."

Selvey quoted the famous line from a Kenny Rogers song in advising McCullum to "know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em."