Twenty years after Otago opener Stu McCullum made a stodgy four runs from 31 balls as his team won the national one-day title, his son Brendon was pounding the Auckland attack into submission and steering the Volts to their second limited-overs banner.
Winning the State Shield final has broken a 10-year drought for Otago in major sporting silverware, going back to 1999's Chatham Cup football victory for Dunedin Technical, and to 1998 for an Otago NPC rugby title and Coca-Cola Cup and national championships titles in netball.
McCullum emptied the bank of superlatives with a stunning innings of 170 as Otago ran down Auckland's massive total of 310 for seven with ease in the State Shield final at Eden Park Outer Oval yesterday.
The only way the world-class wicketkeeper-batsman could have scripted the day better would have been to have hit the winning runs. But with victory one more lusty blow away, he holed out and the honour, instead, went to captain Craig Cumming, who clipped the ball to wide mid-wicket and let out a yell in delight.
The ball was fielded centimetres inside the rope by a young boy but in the grand scheme of things it mattered little. Otago blitzed Auckland by seven wickets and did it with a staggering eight overs to spare.
While Brendon hogged most of the limelight with his extraordinary record-breaking innings, his older brother, Nathan McCullum, was one of the unsung heroes with a tidy spell of bowling which helped Otago wrest back some of the momentum Auckland was building.
While the all-rounder went wicketless, he conceded just 46 runs from his 10 overs, which, on belter of a pitch, was a fine effort.
Stu McCullum is ‘‘bouncing back'' from a minor heart attack last month but was not at the match yesterday.
‘‘He takes a huge interest in how this Otago team does and how we go, and he'll be a proud man, I'm sure,'' Brendon said.
The Otago team is due at Dunedin airport at 4.15pm today.
