JOIN USNew Zealand cricket captain Brendon McCullum hoped his winning the country's Sportsman of the Year award on Wednesday would give his team-mates a massive boost heading into their World Cup opener on Saturday.
The 33-year-old McCullum won the Sportsman of the Year and was a finalist for the supreme prize, the Halberg Award, but was beaten by Olympic and world rowing champions Hamish Bond and Eric Murray, who had also won the Sports Team of the Year on Wednesday.
“It's really humbling but when you play a team sport individual accolades aren't what you play for,” McCullum told reporters in Christchurch on Thursday, hours before the opening ceremony for the World Cup.
“But at the same time I'm respectful of the whole awards and all those other recipients of awards. This one is very much for the boys as well.”McCullum was the first cricketer to win New Zealand's Sportsman of the Year award since former captain Martin Crowe in 1991.
He was recognised for a superb 2014 when he became the first New Zealand player to score more than 1,000 Test runs in a calendar year and also notched the country's first Test triple century.
The 302 he scored against India at the Basin Reserve last February was also voted by the public as New Zealand's Sports Moment of the Year and he said the awards would only help his side before they face Sri Lanka at Hagley Oval on Saturday.