Kane Williamson

Kane Williamson player profile

By the time Kane Williamson is finished with playing cricket, it is probable he will be New Zealand's greatest batter - as held by no less than Martin Crowe. He might also finish as one of the game's most loved figures globally, admired for his affability, equanimity and sense of self-deprecation.

Williamson, who bats right-handed in the top order across formats, has been a pillar of the New Zealand side since his debut in 2010, and soon came to be regarded as one of the "Fab Four" batters of the 2010s and '20s, of whom the others were Virat Kohli, Steven Smith and Joe Root.

Born into a sporting family - his father, mother and sisters played cricket, basketball and volleyball respectively at various levels - Williamson took to cricket early and it grew beyond a hobby for him soon. He was billed to make it big since he was about 14, and sure enough, he scored a century on Test debut against India at 20. About four years later, he was the youngest New Zealand batter (younger than Don Bradman even) to 3000 Test runs.

At the crease, Williamson is comfortable against pace and spin, and his game owes plenty to the coaching manual despite how batting has mutated in the T20 era. Among his best performances is his maiden Test double-century in 2015, which helped New Zealand come from behind and beat Sri Lanka in Wellington. The innings was a testament to his hunger for runs and batting time - he was dissatisfied despite making 242 in over ten hours.

The beauty of Williamson's orthodoxy owes much to how it has been employed for practical ends. Capable of scoring at a brisk tempo, he made a T20 hundred in the short-lived Champions League Twenty20, and became the quickest New Zealand batter, and fifth overall, to 3000 ODI runs. A measure of his consistency is that he had two streaks of five or more successive 50-plus scores in ODIs inside 20 months since 2014. In the World Cup year of 2015, he amassed 1376 runs at an average of 57 and a strike rate just shy of 90.

Rarely given to displays of emotion, Williamson is a genial, but tough, competitor - he struck the winning six in a roller-coaster one-wicket win over Australia in that 2015 World Cup and celebrated with a smile and the calmest of fist pumps as Eden Park exploded in raucous jubilation.

Williamson is also an outstanding catcher and a part-time offspinner, though he needed to remodel his bowling after being banned from bowling in international cricket in June 2014 for an illegal action.

He was an automatic choice to take over the captaincy at the T20 World Cup in 2016, soon after the retirement of the inspirational Brendon McCullum, and he led the team to four back-to-back victories in that tournament, and was highly praised for his tactics, which helped the team capitalise on the slow, turning pitches of India, before they were beaten by England in the semi-final.

In 2018, Williamson led New Zealand to two famous Test series wins. That April he became the fourth New Zealand captain to win a series against England, and in December he was the chief architect of New Zealand's first away Test series win over Pakistan in 49 years, with 89 and 139 in the final Test. The following year he became the first New Zealander to score 20 Test hundreds with an unbeaten double-century against Bangladesh at home.

Around then, he also found his peak as a T20 batter. He played 76 games across eight seasons in all for Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL, winning the title in 2016, and captaining and scoring over 700 runs two years later, when they made their second final.

Williamson scaled the heights at the 2019 World Cup, where he was named Player of the Tournament and carried himself with unprecedented class as the trophy was snatched from New Zealand's hands by England in possibly the greatest ODI of all time. He made two match-winning hundreds against South Africa and West Indies in the tournament, and a vital 67 in the semi-final win against India, to get New Zealand to a second successive World Cup final.

Fittingly, it was under his captaincy that New Zealand won their first ICC title after decades of being pipped close to the post: Williamson made a crucial unbeaten fifty to anchor the chase against India in the inaugural World Test Championship final, in 2021. Later that year, their golden run continued, when they made it to the final of the T20 World Cup - and were beaten by Australia despite Williamson's vital 85.

At the 2023 ODI World Cup, Williamson came back off injury hiatus and made three big scores in his four matches, but there was to be no fairy tale for New Zealand.

Kane Williamson IPL factfile

- Kane Williamson became the first New Zealand player to win the orange cap in the IPL when he scored 735 runs for Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in 2018. At the time, he was only the fourth overseas batter to score over 700 runs in an IPL season after Chris Gayle (twice), Michael Hussey and David Warner.

- Williamson's tally remains the fifth-highest in an IPL season behind Virat Kohli (973 in 2016), Shubman Gill (890 in 2023), Jos Buttler (863 in 2022) and Warner (848 in 2016).

- Williamson also holds the record for the third-most runs in a season as captain, behind Kohli and Warner (both 2016).

- Williamson led SRH to the final of IPL 2018 where they lost to Chennai Super Kings (CSK). Overall, he captained SRH in 46 matches, the second-highest behind Warner's 67.

- Williamson has been part of two champion squads, SRH in 2016 and Gujarat Titans (GT) in 2022, but didn't feature in the final in either of those years.