near the stumps, the West Indies captain, Brian Lara, appealed, and Cullinan was dismissed. By the time, he was batting on 46 and was ruled out by the umpires to become only the second batsman after Mohinder Amarnath to be given out for handling the ball in ODI history. In the first test of the New Zealand tour at Auckland in March 1999, he registered his career best highest test score of 275* which propelled South Africa to pile up a huge first innings total of 621/5 before the declaration call came from South African skipper Hansie Cronje, effectively dented the opportunity for Cullinan to convert his maiden double century to a triple century. He spent 658 or 659 minutes (10 hours 59 minutes) nearly 11 hours in the crease during his marathon knock and also surpassed the record of Graeme Pollock for the then highest ever individual score by a batsman for South Africa in test cricket. His record stood for a long time but was latter shattered by Hashim Amla who scored 311* against England in 2013. As of 2022, it stands as the 4th highest score by a South African in tests. He was part of the infamous 1999 Cricket World Cup campaign where South Africa choked in the crucial moment of their World Cup semi-final against Australia as South Africa were bowled out for 213 resulting in a tie and as a result narrowly losing their way to reach the final on the back of an inferior net run rate. The epic choke by South Africa which was caused due to a terrible mix-up between player of the tournament Lance Klusener and tail-ender Allan Donald was proven costly and later the iconic moment was dubbed as the “birth of the chokers tag”. Cullinan himself played a part in South Africa's humiliating tie as he wasted as many deliveries in his sluggish innings scoring only 6 runs off 30 balls at a mediocre strike rate of 20. In November 1999, he drew level with Gary Kirsten and Dudley Nourse with most test centuries by a South African batter in test cricket when he scored his ninth test hundred in the first test of the five match home test series against England at the Wanderers. He was adjudged the player of the series for his contributions with the bat throughout the series scoring 386 runs but the series