More McCullums, please

New Zealand readers may regard what I'm about to say as patronising. But, with the utmost affection, I'm going to say it anyway: the Kiwi players have always struck me as the most approachable and humble of the lot. (This does not - repeat, not - apply to their rugby players, although that's another topic and not one for this website.) They also have a sense of camaraderie that only a small nation can engender. When I rang Brendon McCullum two nights ago, his first question - I was at the Bangalore-Punjab game in Durban; he'd been out playing golf in Cape Town - was, "How have the Kiwi boys gone?" He was asking about Jesse Ryder and Ross Taylor. And he meant it too.

McCullum is a rare example of wide-eyedness in a tournament you would not exactly equate with innocence. Last year seven of the eight franchise captains who started the tournament were Indian (the exception was Shane Warne). This year Adam Gilchrist has replaced VVS Laxman at the Deccan Chargers; Kevin Pietersen has stepped in for Rahul Dravid for Bangalore Royal Challengers, and will be replaced when he leaves next week by Jacques Kallis; Warne is still in situ; and, most intriguingly, McCullum has emerged from the multiple-captains kerfuffle to sit on Kolkata's throne.

When we spoke on Thursday night, McCullum said: "Back in New Zealand we're used to playing for three million people. When you're with Kolkata, it's more like 25 million. It's a different level of intensity and pressure." I hope McCullum won't mind me saying that he sounded like he was almost pinching himself. But last night at Newlands, the theme continued.

I don't know how many press conferences McCullum has presided over in his time after precisely zero balls have been bowled in the day, but yesterday he found himself dealing with what was probably a newish reality after the Cape Town weather ruined his side's game against Chennai Super Kings (Chennai, it must be said, failed to produce anyone for the press conference: what exactly have they got to hide?).

How did the guys fill time today, Brendon? "We didn't come down to the ground until six o'clock because we thought it would be coming down here as hard as it was at the hotel, so we managed to give the guys a bit of time off. I guess they just stuck round the hotel." How did you get over your Super Over defeat on Wednesday? "There was a bit of frustration. We let it slip away. But you've got to get over it pretty fast. We tried to glean the positives from that performance." How different is captaining New Zealand and Kolkata? See above. And so on and so forth - each answer given due care and attention.

McCullum is a world-class player. His opening partnership with Chris Gayle is fantasy cricket. But there is something endearingly surreal about a Kiwi captaining the franchise that, thanks to Shah Rukh Khan's eye for publicity, has the highest profile of the lot. You suspect McCullum knows it. You also suspect he's just happy to go along for the ride. And a good thing too. The IPL needs more people like him.