LONDON, ENGLAND: When Kane Williamson batted, the world did not stop and watch, but now that he will not do so anymore, it must wish it had. Harsha Bhogle’s encapsulating reference to Rahul Dravid being ‘a good man who batted like a good man’ applies to Williamson, too, solely because of the smile he brought to everyone’s faces whenever he walked out to bat.
Williamson had none of the grace of Joe Root, the panache of Steve Smith and the inevitability of Virat Kohli; he went one step beyond by incorporating bits from each. Among the Fab Four of this generation – and possibly any generation – the shy New Zealander from Tauranga was arguably the easiest to watch. And arguably the hardest to dislike.
Root brought a sense of familiarity to the crease, Smith showed why the ugly must also be loved, while Kohli won – almost demanded – everyone’s grudging admiration. Kane Williamson did none of that; he simply smiled, walked out to bat, took guard and faced up to his first ball. And bat he could. The 9,515 runs that he scored in Test cricket are the most by any Kiwi.
Kane Williamson is New Zealand’s leading run-scorer in international cricket
With 19,346, he is also the island nation’s leading run-getter across all formats, which is a record that looks unlikely to be broken anytime soon, given that the only active cricketer on this list, Tom Latham, sits afar with 11,358. But the numbers can not do justice to what Williamson brought onto the field. How could statisticians measure unflappability and the ability to create no fuss?
Kane Williamson decorated his house with qualities that were found in short supply at stores across the world since the turn of the decade – humility, equanimity and courtesy. A man like him was almost an anomaly on a cricket field when coming up against swearing, rage-baiting, tattooed alcoholics. And yet, he never felt embarrassed being a vinyl man in a digital world; his job was to score runs and win cricket matches for New Zealand, and he did his job well.
The love that Kane Williamson has generated across the world upon his departure from international cricket last week raises hopes that such qualities, ingloriously relegated to being called ‘old-world’, still exist. Pele was once renowned for forcing a cease-fire between two warring factions in Nigeria so that the armies could watch him play; Williamson could have done the same, albeit with a smile. That a man could go about his business without ever having courted controversy in a generation that worshipped nightclub fiascos is his greatest legacy.
The World Test Championship title, the ODI World Cup runners-up medal and the 19,346 runs come a distant second.
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