The Oncology Centre at Christchurch Hospital is the last place you’d expect to find a cricket match in full swing.

It’s a long, L-shaped room with lazy-boy chairs hugging the outer windows.

More often than not, there’s standing room only because all the chairs are occupied by day-patients on chemotherapy.

Cancer is no respecter of persons, so you’d be pressed to find a wider cross-section of humanity than the various occupants of the chemo ward.

Class, creed and culture carry no advantage in such sterile surroundings,

Indeed, if it were not for the nurses who minister cheerfully to each and everyone, the place might resemble a holding pen of quiet stoicism.

Not last Tuesday, however, when Brendon McCullum knocked the record book for six at Wellington’s Basin Reserve and became the first NZ cricketer to score 300 runs.

It took him nearly 13 hours and 557 balls to get there, and he was out just two balls later for 302. But the ecstatic Basin was past counting. As were the occupants of chemo row.

Ipads and smartphones are no match for tiny transistor radios when there’s next-to-no satellite signal. Which is why so many chemo patients were sporting earphones as McCullum slowly ascended the Aoraki of NZ cricketing history.

The excitement was palpable, the joy infectious, as updates echoed across the ward. Strangers all? Yes – and no, for epic achievements excite the best in us and forge community in unlikely places.

McCullum’s feat has certainly injected fresh life into NZ Cricket’s prospects for next year’s World Cup series, financially as well as on the green. Tickets are selling faster than… well, a McCullum boundary shot.

There’s sure to be a spin-off, too, at club and schoolboy levels as more would-be McCullums pursue dreams of routing the world’s best.

But let’s not overlook the social capital that accrues from herculean achievements such as we witnessed last Tuesday.

In homes across the country – from bed-sits to moneyed mansions – disparate people living lives of quiet desperation were suddenly galvanised into a community of conquerors, and it felt pretty darn good to be Kiwi.

Frankly, I don’t give a toss (sorry) about the dollar returns from NZ’s win over India.

Neither do I care much whether world cricket now considers us a force to be reckoned with. I’ve long known that God’s Own Country is aptly named – on and off the playing field.

No, what makes sport utterly divine in my eyes is the way a superlative performance may lift the spirits of that multitude who, through no fault of their own, are sidelined by life itself.

They’re largely invisible, and yet they are family, friends and neighbours. People, that is, who have had the ill fortune to face some dodgy balls, and been damaged physically or mentally as a consequence.

Call me fanciful if you wish, but I like to think that McCullum went into bat for all of us last Tuesday, especially those on the hard and lonely backbenches of society.

And didn’t we do well!