Brendon McCullum is one of the faces of Twenty20 cricket. His extraordinary 158, which cut the IPL ribbon two years ago, is still the highest in the shortest format of the game and he made the second Twenty20 international century a few weeks ago.

But when I spoke to McCullum for the April issue of The Wisden Cricketer (out on Friday) it was clear he is intent upon a more wide-ranging impact on the game.

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Sometimes we focus so much on what is wrong with Test cricket that it is easy to forget the joy it continues to provide, never more so than in this particularly frenzied period of Tests.

The recent series between India and Sri Lanka may have been too batsman-friendly but it provided some extraordinary passages of play. Who could not have wished to see Virender Sehwag’s assault in the third Test, elegant and brutal in equal measure? For Sri Lanka, Tillakaratne Dilshan’s innings were also moments when you had to bin ideas of work and focus on some ball-by-ball Test cricket. There were personal narratives too – Sreesanth, suddenly the grounded, almost geeky bowler of immaculate line and length, Murali suddenly lacking in fizz and accuracy. And Angelo Mathews – doing an Atherton when on 99 and in sight of his first Test hundred.

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So the New Zealanders came, saw and were duly conquered in the Champions Trophy final. Australia uber alles, and all that.

It is, of course, churlish to deny the Australians the glory they have earned and deserve.

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And so to the Champions Trophy final. What a prospect. Tell me when it’s all over the bar shouting.

If only the Australians weren’t quite so obviously on their way to another triumph. If only someone more threatening than New Zealand were playing them in the final.

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If you don’t have time in your life for a new cricketing cult figure, I suggest you don’t watch Jesse Ryder play.

We already know a lot about Jesse. He is a big man, there is no getting around it (pun not intended); he is just large. He makes Samit Patel look like an anorexic French model.

He likes a drink, or 17, and occasionally he takes it too far and gets himself in trouble with bathrooms late at night.

He can bat – seriously bat, and has a technique so uncluttered it looks like a team of reality TV cleaners have just come through.

He is also a man who can laugh when he is on 99*, on the verge of his maiden ton and Chris Martin, the worst batsman in modern cricket, is playing and missing.
This Test has shown us a whole other side to Jesse, one that a lot of New Zealand experts didn’t believe he had.

His raw anger at getting out for 201 was brilliant to watch. He really cares. It may not always shine through the late-night drinking sessions, but instead of being happy with a double-ton, he showed a furious rage that most people only show when they get out for 99.

Forget the boring beefcakes, with their nutritional requirements and early-to-bed routines. Jesse blows them out of the water on the field, and is 10-times more watchable when he does it.

Skill, passion and aura can still trump academy training and cookie-cutter cricketers.
When Jesse is on top, the Kiwis are on top. He has cricket charisma. His team-mates love playing with him as much as we love watching him.

Adam Parore, Jesse’s biggest cynic, wrote that he wasn’t a batting stylist. Never have I heard such blasphemy. While every other new batsman seems to hop around like a coked-up kiddie-show presenter, Ryder is calm and smooth. It’s like Leonard Cohen standing on a stage with Britney, Hayley and Duffy.

On top of it all, the man is bringing the game to the people of New Zealand. Not the normal cricket fans, but the rugby fans that have always thought cricket was a fun-sponge of a game. Jesse is one of them, and he has the ability (along with Prince Brendon McCullum) to bring these new people to the game.

So this big, beautiful man may not just be a cult figure, he could become a cult leader, with a bunch of young New Zealanders in tow. Can’t you just see him in a robe.

Jrod is an Australian cricket blogger. His site Cricketwithballs.com won last July’s Best of Blogs in TWC

What is it with cricket teams at the moment? So many of them appear to be resurgent. First Australia return to their status as world-beaters (after a dip shorter than Bryce McGain’s Test career), then West Indies win their first Test series for five years. Now New Zealand are joining in, the flaying of India’s vaunted attack led by two very gifted enigmas, Ross Taylor and Jesse Ryder.

For too long their undoubted ability as a one-day side has held back their advancement as a Test side. They can be destructive over 50 overs because their batsmen don’t hang around; they are self-destructive over five days for precisely the same reason. Prior to the current Test at Napier, the last time New Zealand batted for over 150 overs in an innings was also the last time one of their batsmen scored a double-hundred: April 2006.

Taylor, in his 16th Test and Ryder, in his 8th, could well change that thinking. The ease and assurance with which they played in the first innings at Napier suggested they’d been around for years. Both hundreds were innings of high-class batsmen, two that have the potential to get into any batting line-up in the world, on any pitch. Sure, the track was dead but the Indian attack is skilled. Yet neither batsman looked in any danger, their timing as good as Ponting’s or Tendulkar’s.

Ryder has had very public problems, but he is young and New Zealand have stuck with him, and look at how he’s rewarded their faith. He’s still obviously far too keen on eating the wrong things (although Samit Patel may have watched his innings with interest), but the way he reacted when getting out first ball after completing his double-hundred was as telling as it was surprising, slamming his bat to the ground in anger. His appetite for runs was obvious throughout the innings, but his disgust at getting out to a loose shot made it palpable. This is a man who isn’t happy unless he’s scoring big.

For too long New Zealand batsmen have made average bowlers looks good (Ryan Sidebottom anyone?), but with these two in the middle-order they have the ability to make good bowlers look average. World cricket needs a good Kiwi side as much as it needs a successful West Indies, and, with Taylor and Ryder fulfilling their promise, I know which one I’d bet on happening sometime soon.

Daniel Brigham is assistant editor of The Wisden Cricketer

Most Test series begin with the first ball and end with the final ball, a point so apparently obvious as to prompt a contemptuous ‘duh!’ in response. But the Ashes is different. England won the Ashes on September 12, 2005, but their campaign started with victory in the Champions Trophy semi-final on September 21, 2004. Australia regained the Ashes on December 18, 2006, but their campaign started on September 14, 2005, when they stepped off the plane to Australia and threw their bodies and souls into the 14-month preparation of the coldest dish of all.

Sometimes these dates are only apparent with hindsight – although the potential significance of that Champions Trophy game was clear at the time – yet it seems fair to suggest that the 2009 Ashes are already underway. Interested observers are thus inclined to slip into the Columbo role, scrutinising every available piece of information for clues as to what might happen next summer. And while a thoroughly routine home victory over New Zealand might seem like inadmissible evidence, the precedent of 2005 suggests otherwise.

Then, Jason Gillespie returned from a triumphant tour of India as one of the best bowlers in the world, only to have a very poor series in New Zealand at the start of 2005. Few knew it at the time but, at 29, he had jumped the shark. Greg Matthews suggested it before the Ashes and the England think-tank realised it, if calculated assaults by Michael Vaughan and Kevin Pietersen are anything to go by, but that was about it.

So what can we discern from Australia’s win over New Zealand? The most obvious is that, while the 2-0 scoreline was the same, Australia did the job far more impressively than England in the summer. There were no draws, and no embarrassing first-innings deficits. Even the assumption that Australia were in trouble in the first Test at the Gabba was put to bed once New Zealand batted.

The most obvious individual feat was Brad Haddin’s maiden Test century, a withering and – yes – Gilchristian assault on tired bowling of 169 from 222 balls. But given the poverty of New Zealand’s attack, it would be as unwise to hail this as a breakthrough as it was to do the same when Tim Ambrose made a maiden century against them at Wellington earlier this year. The jury remains very much out on Haddin.

Michael Clarke and Simon Katich averaged over 70, with Clarke’s wonderfully disciplined 98 at the Gabba showing that the boy has fully grown up (too much so, some might argue, if his sanctimonious criticism of Andrew Symonds for his fishing trip is anything to go by) while Katich, Australia’s Polyfilla Man (in a 32-Test career he had batted everywhere from opener down to No7) continued to impress without getting much credit. It was staggering, but in keeping with Katich’s career, that he was not named Man of the Match in the first Test despite carrying his bat for 131 in an innings where nobody else passed 31.

That award went to Mitchell Johnson, whose 14 wickets at 11.00 in the series will, Australia hope, represent a significant breakthrough. But given what has happened to another left-armer, Ryan Sidebottom, since taking New Zealand apart, it might be unwise to presume too much. Nonetheless, a seam attack of Brett Lee, who took a career-best nine wickets in the second Test, Stuart Clark, who went unfussily about his business as ever to claim seven wickets at 23.75, and Johnson should be more than a match for England’s but the enormous concerns over the back-up pace bowling and particularly the spinner remain.

The struggles of Ricky Ponting (41.60 from 13 Tests in the last year) and especially Matthew Hayden look like those of players who have gone over the top of the hill (and, in Hayden’s case, are halfway down the other side), but with these champions any assumptions are dangerous: Hayden was apparently finished after the 2005 Ashes, since when he has scored nine centuries.

Nonetheless, Hayden is surely in the last-chance saloon against South Africa. If the evidence of the New Zealand series wasn’t especially clear, Australia’s back-to-back series against a team that hammered England should give us some enormous clues as to where the Ashes are heading.

Rob Smyth is a freelance journalist

Okay, this isn’t the most fashionable thing to write about, especially regarding a team that’s just suffered a 2-0 drubbing, but New Zealand have the makings of a proper Test side.

They haven’t had the best years, suffering two defeats to England, struggling past Bangladesh then supping on a can of Aussie whoop-ass. But there’s enough encouragement in the detail to suggest the future is bright for the Kiwis.

First, they are well led by the world’s best allrounder. Daniel Vettori has had a stellar 2008 – averaging 36 with bat and 27 with ball. Second, they are young. Very young. Tim Southee, Jesse Ryder, Daniel Flynn, Ross Taylor are all under 25. Vettori is still not yet 30.

New Zealand lacks depth in participation and has a flimsy first-class game, so talent is rushed into the Test side, meaning they learn on the job. It is just a fact of Kiwi cricket life and some players sink with it – this lot are learning to swim.

Taylor’s hundred at Old Trafford was breath-taking. I was chatting to CricInfo editor Sambit Bal, one of cricket’s more astute judges, at the World Twenty20 last September. He explained how Taylor was one of few pure, class batsmen playing – without affectation and with elegant orthodoxy.

Ryder was arrogant and untouchable against England in the one-dayers in New Zealand. Southee will get better and better but the one who quietly impressed was Flynn. Despite James Anderson re-arranging a few teeth in Manchester, Flynn showed touch, flair and bravery in a number of knocks. He’s flown under the radar because he hasn’t cashed in with a real score yet but it’ll happen.

There are weak links – they are a batsman and bowler short (if only Shane Bond would return) – but there’s also Brendan McCullum, Jacob Oram and determined seam bowlers such as Chris Martin – who bowled brilliantly at Lord’s this year without reward.

And look at their defeats – they had flashes of dominance but let the initiative slip horridly – see Brisbane and Old Trafford. Classic traits of a young side learning to win.

New Zealand’s biggest hurdle will be keeping their players and stopping the squabbling. With ICL and IPL offering schedule and contract-destroying alternatives – not to mention county cricket – if only there was a Kiwi Allen Stanford to break the cliques and cartels, pay the players what they’re worth and help them become a serious force.

I think this will happen anyway in the next four years. If it does, you read it here first. If it doesn’t – well, they’re so unfashionable, just forget I mentioned it.

Edward Craig is deputy editor of The Wisden Cricketer