‘My first thought was ‘oh gosh, there's an end point': One of ‘Fab Four', Kane Williamson shares his thoughts on Virat Kohli's Test retirement

Indian Express

a day ago

Being one of the 'Fab Four', a term coined by former New Zealand Captain Martin Crowe first in 2014 for the quartet of Virat Kohli, Kane Williamson, Joe Root and Steve Smith, Kiwi batsman Kane Williamson currently stands at the third highest run scorer among the four batsmen in Tests. While Kohli retired earlier this month after playing 123 Tests and amassing 9,230 runs, Williamson has played in 105 tests amassing 9,276 runs and is currently behind Smith's tally of 10,271 runs (116 Tests) and Root's tally of 13,006 runs (153 Tests). With the rest of the three of the 'Fab Four' batsmen still playing in Tests, 34-year-old Williamson has revealed how Kohli's retirement, a first among the four, made him wonder about having 'an end point'.
'My first thought was 'oh gosh, there's an end point. Because before that, you're on the journey, there's a pursuit there. And it's not connected to those other three, but we've all been playing at the same time, and we've all competed against each other for a long time and we all know each other pretty well. So then you do start to reflect a little bit. I know Virat pretty well, we've chatted a lot over the years, but you do realise that we're not just cricketers as well, we're human beings and your life situation changes.' Williamson told The Guardian in an interview.
Williamson, who has a Test average of 54.88 runs, currently stands at 17th spot in the list of world's leading Test run scorers with Sachin Tendulkar sitting at the top with 15,921 runs. The Kiwi cricketer has arrived in England to play for Middlesex in the Vitality Blast as well County Championship and has shared his memories of playing country cricket in England.
'Summer's always got a nice buzz here in the UK and especially in London, so it's great to call it home for a few months. I know I really valued my time in England actually playing county cricket as a young player, getting exposed and having to learn. You're just constantly having to try and work things out but getting so many opportunities to do it. Whereas in most other parts of the world you're playing half as many games a year,' added Williamson.
New Zealand will next play an international match when the team travels to Zimbabwe for a T20I series involving hosts Zimbabwe apart from South Africa and New Zealand in July before they play a two Test series against Zimbabwe. The 34-year-old also talked about how he sees red-ball cricket as 'the soul of the game'. 'The opportunities now are vast and that's an amazing thing. But my passion was for the red-ball game, that was the pinnacle, and that's where my aspirations were, growing up. I guess on the other side, you have the white-ball formats and they come and they go pretty quickly and there's so much of it going on, which presents a lot of fantastic opportunities, but yeah, when I talk about the soul of the game I still see that as the red-ball cricket,' said Williamson.