Thank You, Kane
For everything.
I wasn’t ready for that news. How could I possibly have been?
When I saw the headline last night on Cricinfo at about 9:30 pm that Kane Williamson had retired from international cricket, it hit me like a gut punch from a grizzly bear shortly after having a piano fall on me from a great height. I’ve still not clicked through and read the full article. I suppose I wanted to live in denial for one more night, pretending that Kane Williamson was still playing for New Zealand.
With this news, there will be plenty of time to trawl through Kane’s stats with a fine-toothed comb, debate his merits relative to Crowe and where he sits in New Zealand’s all-time pantheon, and settle once and for all his ranking within the Fab Four.
But that can all wait.
This article isn’t going to be about the stats*. For now, I just want to reflect on what Kane Williamson has meant to me, and to New Zealand cricket at large, for these past 15 years, and say thank you.
*Knowing myself, it probably still will be at least a little bit.
I have been watching Kane Williamson play cricket for New Zealand for more than half my life. When he burst onto the scene with a debut 131 against India in Ahmedabad in 2010, I was about a week away from turning 15. Extrapolate from that how old I am now. It is a funny feeling, realising that you’ve been cheering for a cricketer that you’ve never even met for more than half your life, but one I suspect many readers will relate to.
But even that mindboggling realisation somehow undersells Williamson. I remember hearing whispers in awed tones about this almost mythical batting talent right back when I was playing Under 10s and 11s cricket. You’d turn up to training, and someone would have heard a new rumour that this 15-year-old prodigy had just dominated another school carnival. You’d turn up to a game on Saturday and hear about how he’d scored 10 consecutive hundreds without being dismissed; his thirst for runs seemingly unquenchable. Then the next week it’d be that he’s dominating senior cricket, breaking records that teenagers shouldn’t even be thinking about touching. Next thing you knew, you’d hear that he’s scoring 1,000* as part of his 20th consecutive century against prime Richard Hadlee.
No doubt the rumours got exaggerated, but the excitement was palpable, and the hyperbole was deserved. Even in these discussions, there was a sense of inevitability: not a question of if, but when Williamson would rise through the international ranks. I can’t remember the exact Test, but I’m almost certain that a still-teenage Kane even got a shoutout from Ian Smith on commentary during this period, circa ~2006ish, after he’d watched him dominate yet another school carnival. I remember that the Black Caps had just experienced another humiliating batting collapse, and the commentators were discussing the bare cupboard of potential batting replacements domestically, when Smith brought up Williamson’s name, almost as if to say, ‘I know the team looks pretty dire right now, but hang in there, better things are just around the corner.’
And boy, were they. There are so many stats that illustrate Williamson’s monumental impact on New Zealand cricket, but I think my favourite is this: in the 80s, 90s and 2000s combined, the Black Caps won 57 Tests total. From 2010 to present, they have won 57 more.
In 30 years, New Zealand won 57 Tests. It has taken just 16 to win the next 57. You can’t put that solely down to Williamson, but he certainly deserves more of the credit than anyone else.
Appropriately, Williamson has been involved in 47 of those wins, and will finish his career (I don’t even like typing it) as New Zealand’s most successful Test cricketer, tied with Tom Latham and Tim Southee for most Tests won.
I know that what I’m about to say is a massive oversimplification, but grant me that: Williamson (47) won more Tests for New Zealand than Sir Richard Hadlee (22), Martin Crowe (16), and Glenn Turner (6) combined (46). As great as those other players are, and I’m not trying to undermine that for a second, I don’t think anyone has ever impacted New Zealand winning Test matches more than Kane Williamson.
Nor have many batters ever been more dominant at home than Williamson. The common rebuttal online to that seems to be ‘well, you’re supposed to score runs at home’, as if it’s easy, but if that were the case, plenty of great batters would average 65+ at home like Williamson, and they don’t. In fact, only 8 batters have ever averaged more at home than Williamson (min. 10 Tests), and it is a list of unimpeachable, all-time legends (plus Charlie Davis, who was also excellent but only played 15 Tests and is a bit forgotten).
Across 55 home Tests, Williamson averaged 65.76, scoring 20 centuries. In the history of Test cricket, the only batters (min. 10 Tests) to average more than Williamson at home are: Charlie Davis, Gary Sobers, Graeme Pollock, Everton Weekes, Vijay Hazare, Clyde Walcott, George Headley, and Donald Bradman. ‘Elite company’ doesn’t even do that list justice.
Since Gary Sobers retired in 1974, no one has averaged more in their home conditions than Kane Williamson. It’s not quite ‘best since Bradman’, but ‘best since Sobers’ still has a very nice ring to it.
Among those to have played at least as many home Tests as Williamson’s 55, he is far and away on top in terms of average. Javed Miandad (61.38) and Kumar Sangakkara (60.44) are the only others to have played at least as many home Tests as Williamson while averaging over 60. Only 15 others, and again, it is a list of legends, average 50+ at home, having played at least as many Tests as Williamson. To use a video game analogy, it’s almost as though Williamson totally maxed out his home skills, leaving him slightly more vulnerable away.
Thank you, Kane, for letting New Zealanders witness the most dominant home batter since Sobers for the last 15 years. Many fans, for whom New Zealand home Tests happen overnight in a quaint little corner of the world, will never fully appreciate the true extent of this home mastery.
It feels almost impossible to pick a favourite Kane Williamson moment, but I suppose it’s only appropriate that I end this glorified stream of consciousness by trying.
Of course, the World Test Championship final always springs to mind. The memories of continually telling myself ‘just 5 more overs and then I’ll go to sleep’ before eventually pulling an all-nighter as it became clearer and clearer that the win was on will always stay with me. I’m not sure I’ve ever fistpumped harder than when Rosco and Kane were together for the winning runs. For about two years after, this image of Kane holding the mace aloft was my phone screensaver:
Trying to pick a favourite hundred out of the 33 feels agonising, but if you twisted my arm, I think I’d still go with the 102* (228) against South Africa in 2012, as Kane wore body blow after body blow from Steyn, Morkel, and Philander to secure a gutsy, against-the-odds draw. Captain Ross Taylor was injured, the team quickly collapsed to 5/83, effectively 6/83, with another 45 overs left to survive, and no one else scored more than 39. None of that deterred Kane.
Either that, or his masterpiece 140 at the Gabba in 2015 against Starc, Johnson, Hazlewood, and Lyon, with, again, no other New Zealand batter scoring more than 47.
Or if you’re looking for a more niche Williamson memory, I’ll always remember the second T20 against Zimbabwe in 2012 (bet you didn’t see that coming). With 9 balls remaining, New Zealand had just lost Brendon and Nathan McCullum in consecutive deliveries, still needing 21 more runs to chase down Zimbabwe’s 200. Out Williamson walked at number 7, having been pushed down the order due to his strike rate. He proceeded to hit 4, 2, 4, 6, 4 (with a couple of Andy Ellis singles in between) to finish 20* (5) and save New Zealand some embarrassment, winning the game with two balls to spare. I think about that innings disproportionately often when wondering what Kane could have been in T20 cricket if he’d just unshackled himself from being an anchor.
But I think the single moment that best encapsulates Williamson, and the ball that I will think about most often when reflecting on his career, was his match-winning 6 off Pat Cummins in the World Cup group game between New Zealand and Australia in 2015. You almost certainly remember the game, but just in case, let me set the scene. Australia raced to 80/1 after 12 overs, before a masterclass from Trent Boult and Daniel Vettori saw them collapse to 151 all out. Initially, New Zealand looked fairly comfortable in the chase, racing to 78/1 in 8 overs thanks to Brendon McCullum, but 3 wickets in 4 balls saw that stumble to 79/4. Corey Anderson and Williamson steadied the ship with a 50 partnership, before Starc ripped through New Zealand’s tail, falling from 131/4 in 19.3 overs to 146/9 in 22.4. Having watched the carnage from the other end and seen Boult block out the final two balls of Starc’s over, Williamson knew the responsibility was on his shoulders to win the game that over, as the likelihood of Boult surviving another Starc over was minuscule.
Lesser players would panic. Not Kane. All he needed was one ball—from Pat Cummins, no less. He calmly steps across, exposing all three stumps, having identified that mid on is in the ring, and slams a fuller ball from Cummins back over mid on for 6. He plays the shot as though it is the simplest, most natural thing in the world. That is Williamson in a nutshell. Whatever he had to do to help New Zealand win, he did, whether that was grinding out a Test 50 on a tricky deck, stepping up and slamming 20* (5) against Zimbabwe, smashing Pat Cummins down the ground for 6, or anything in between.
Thank you, Kane. For everything.
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Great article as usual! Was just telling a friend yesterday that I was waiting for an article from you about Kane's retirement.
But wow last ball win vs SL robbed tbh. Also tbf, Kane was always a really really good T20 batter at his prime. You don't top score in an IPL season and lead your team to a final if you aren't. Game just went past him a little bit in the latter half of his career.
Something unique about Kane Williamson, which will probably never happen again, everyone knows he has no haters, but he is arguably even more popular around the world than he is in his home country. In a short list of universally popular athletes among both peers and fans.
Williamson anecdote I heard when speaking cricket with a Kiwi in London a year and a half ago, said he had played an under-16s school semi final against Williamson, everyone knew who he was, he hit a chance to mid off on 10, dropped and he made 160.