“Those last two games were pretty cool. I was not-out at the end of the Eden Park game, and that game at Hamilton was just crazy. It was one of the first times in world cricket, really, that teams started to think 350 wasn’t unobtainable – because we’d done it before, even though we were in it a bit, we just thought we’d have a crack.
“I remember talking with Craig McMillan when we were out there, and we both just said ‘we’ve won the series, let’s just have a crack. If we get out at least it’s an early finish’. As they say the rest is history, Craig played an amazing knock, so did Brendon, and it’s something I’ll always remember.”
Fulton’s 51 was outshone by McMillan’s astounding hundred, and McCullum’s heroics finishing the innings, but all three were necessary for the team success. And a whitewash over Australia – over Australia! What a team success it was.
It got Fulton in the World Cup squad, but not the first choice XI. It took an injury to Lou Vincent for Fulton to worm his way into the team. He certainly proved himself – he averaged nearly 40, made two fifties, and was the only man of note as the team crumbled in the semi-final.
“I broke a finger in one of the warm-up games, and before that it probably would have been touch-and-go over whether I’d get in the team for the first few games. That broken finger probably made the decision easier to leave me out. But luckily for me, and unluckily for Lou, he broke his arm and I got another opportunity.
“A lot of people didn’t enjoy that World Cup, because it was spread out over such a long period of time with a lot of time between games. But I loved it. It was my first time in the West Indies, in a World Cup, and I had a bit of success. Up until the World Cup last season, that was probably the World Cup where we should have made the final. We had Sri Lanka on the ropes a bit, and let them off the hook, and then a middle-order collapse ended our hopes unfortunately.”
The following year, 2008, saw Fulton enter the Test fray again. He toured England, without managing a Test berth, then played a handful of matches against Bangladesh, Australia and Pakistan over 2008 and ’09.
Although he failed to get past 36, it would be easy for Fulton to be disappointed that he never got a decent run in the side, but he puts that blame squarely on himself.
“That period I got a few opportunities, and just didn’t take them, really. Anyone who gets left out would like a few more games, a few more chances to prove themselves, but I had plenty of opportunities when I look back and wasn’t good enough at the time to take them. If you get opportunities and don’t take them, you’ve only got yourself to look at, I guess.”
