"They were the enemy today, but from a New Zealander's point of view, it's a good thing that a team from there does well," McCullum said after KKR's seven-wicket loss to the qualifiers here.
"They've dominated the domestic T20 competition for the last two years and have spent plenty of time here in preparation.
"They're playing some excellent cricket. It's great to see from that they are winning games in this tournament and hopefully New Zealand's involvement in CLT20 continues."
Reflecting on his team's performance, McCullum said KKR have not yet realised their full potential.
"We're starting off very slowly and also the conditions are very different from back in India. We've failed to get all three aspects of the game together so far.
"But we're not out of the competition yet; we need a certain things to go our way and we'll play a lot better in the next two games. We're not quite there at the moment," he said.
"We've got two big games to go and we can't be too harsh on ourselves. That will only make it more difficult for us to improve our game in the coming games." MORE