The Crowe-Thorpe Trophy of 2026 was the stage for an unusual though not unprecedent occurrence happening not once but twice: two players announced their immediate retirement from international cricket in the middle of the series. And not just any old players, but two of the most iconic cricketers of the last dozen years, Kane Williamson and Ben Stokes. And, as in much of their careers, they did this particular thing very differently.
In Stokes’ case, “stage” is the right word; the only word. His retirement was announced on the fourth afternoon of the third Test at Trent Bridge while he was actually in the middle of a spell – almost inevitably he took a wicket straight afterwards – and it was followed by a succession of standing ovations, guards of honour and all the rest of it.
Williamson’s announcement could only have been more different if it had been contained in a letter, or telegram, addressed to the New Zealand board. It came between the first and second Tests and was the simplest possible statement. No fanfare, no opportunity for a last hurrah. It was measured, straightforward and dignified, attributes that Williamson had demonstrated throughout his exceptionally distinguished career.
Both announcements came as a shock, but perhaps on reflection not so much of a surprise. Williamson had made no secret of the fact that he would be picking and choosing series – he had declined a central contract in 2024 – and like everyone, was seeking a more reasonable work-life balance. That said, he played against Ireland, and in that sense his immediate retirement did come as a surprise, with upcoming series against Australia and India, providing, one would have thought, considerable incentive. On the face of it, it would appear that, like Stokes, he had simply had enough.
Williamson leaves international cricket with a stellar record. In 110 Tests, he scored 9,515 runs at an average of 54.06, with 33 centuries. In 175 ODIs, he scored 7256 runs at an average of 48.59, and a strike rate of 81.59 with 15 centuries.
This puts him comfortably ahead, in terms of statistics, of any compatriot batsman: Ross Taylor, in 112 Tests, scored 7,683 runs at an average of 44.56, with 19 centuries.
But it is really with the other members of cricket’s “Fab Four” with whom Williamson needs to be compared. It was fellow New Zealander Martin Crowe – the country’s greatest batsman prior to Williamson – who back in 2014, before any of them had made an indelible mark on the game, who identified Williamson, Steve Smith, Virat Kohli and Joe Root, as exceptionally gifted and the greatest players of their generation. Rarely can such a bold prediction have been borne out so comprehensively by the facts.
Williamson, inevitably, has played fewer Tests than the others: New Zealand have not played a five-match series since 1970-71. Kohli has retired from Test cricket. He played 123 Tests, the same number as Smith. Root is well ahead on 166.
It is the average which matters most. An average of fifty is generally regarded as the benchmark for the great player. Smith has been historically exceptional from that point of view, for a long time averaging over a sixty, but he is sliding down the scale a bit and is currently on 56. For much of his career Kohli was averaging in the mid-fifties but he too slid down and finished on 46. Root has gone in the opposite direction. He has become more consistent, and much more adept at converting fifties to hundreds, as he has got older; he is hovering on the fifty mark. In 2019, to pick a year at random about halfway through the relevant period, when Kohli was averaging 53, Smith 64 (!) and Root 47, Williamson was averaging 52. He has been a model of consistency throughout his career.
He scored runs against everyone, everywhere. One test is surely how you do against the world’s best attacks. Smith of course had the great advantage of not having to face the Australian bowlers, in Australia or anywhere else. New Zealand have a real issue when it comes to facing their neighbours across the Tasman Sea. They have not won a three-match series against Australia since 1985-86. They have not drawn a series since 2011-12, when Williamson scored a second innings 54 in the victory at the Bellerive Oval, Hobart. But in the three-Test series in Australia in 2015-16, Williamson scored 473 runs at an average of 85.60, making 140 in the defeat at Brisbane and 166 in the draw at Perth, where he and Taylor (290) put on 285 for the third wicket. Overall, however, his average against Australia was 36.95, compared with Root (40.98) and Kohli, who really stands alone in this particular zone (43.76, and 48.72 in Australia). Williamson played exactly half his Tests at home where he averaged 65.76.
Another key indicator is the regularity with which a batsman makes centuries. Williamson made 33 Test hundreds in 195 innings. He is twelfth equal on the all-time list. The first few, such as Sachin Tendulkar and Jacques Kallis, are way ahead, but number five, Kumar Sangakkara is on 38: he had 233 innings. It is fair to assume – please, there are only 24 hours in a day – that Williamson got to 33 Test hundreds more quickly, perhaps much more quickly, than anyone else. (Alastair Cook, who also made 33 hundreds, had 291 innings.) This makes Williamson look really exceptional.
There was never any doubt about the quality of Williamson’s batting. He made a century on debut against India in Ahmedabad; as a twenty year old he was the youngest New Zealander to make a century on debut, batting for six and a half hours.
Early returns were inevitably mixed, but in 2014, after Brendon McCullum became captain, Williamson grew more consistent. By the end of that calendar year, he had made eight centuries in 38 Tests.
Those hundreds against Australia came in November 2015, which was a tremendous year for Williamson. He started with 242 not out against Sri Lanka at the Basin Reserve in Wellington in January. In May, he made 132 against England at Lord’s, his tenth Test century. He was the sixth player to score ten centuries before his twenty-fifth birthday: the other five were Don Bradman, Neil Harvey, Garry Sobers, Tendulkar and Graeme Smith. Back home in December he made a match-winning fourth-innings century on a green difficult wicket at Hamilton against Sri Lanka, scoring 108 not out, out of 189 for five. Sri Lanka’s fastest bowler, Pathira Chameera had caused problems in New Zealand’s first innings, especially when pitching short, but Williamson avoided the hook and the pull in what the Wisden match report described as “another batting masterclass”. He finished the year with 1,172 Test runs at 90, beating McCullum’s record, set the previous year, for the most runs scored by a New Zealander in a calendar year. He was the first Kiwi to be named Wisden Leading Cricketer In The World.
That owed as much to his achievements in one-day cricket, where he scored 1,376 runs in the calendar year at 57.33; his total international runs for the year had only been exceeded twice, by Ricky Ponting in 2005 and Sangakkara in 2014. In the World Cup, he played one memorable innings against co-hosts Australia in an extraordinary pool match at Auckland. Australia made 151. Wickets fell steadily to Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins, but Williamson batting as usual in the critical position of number three, was still there, 39 not out at the start of the 24th over, bowled by Cummins, the score 146 for nine. Williamson almost nonchalantly hit the first ball over long-on for six, and the match was won.
That innings, and the year as a whole, told us a lot about Williamson. His exceptional calmness, whatever the situation, was a striking aspect of his cricket. His selflessness was another feature, not so evident in that innings but in the year as a whole apart from his three ODI hundreds, he made three scores in the nineties. Personal milestones did not matter; it was the team that counted. It also goes without saying that he was a technical master. Steven Lynch, in the Wisden match report on the game at Lord’s said that Williamson played the ball “impossibly late”; this together with soft hands enabled him to guide the ball regularly down to third man. Root does this too – Root has expressed his gratitude to Williamson for technical advice – but Root sometimes gets out doing it: Williamson rarely did. His calmness made him a lovely player to watch. He was that most powerful of combinations, the clinician and the aesthete. Still at the crease, with decisive footwork and precise placement, he was a glorious driver of the ball, especially straight, and through the covers.
In 2016, McCullum retired and Williamson succeeded him as captain. He led his country in 40 Test matches, winning 22 of them. New Zealand inevitably tend to struggle against the strongest sides, but Williamson always led from the front; thus, they lost the home series to South Africa in 2016-17 but Williamson averaged 77.25. He failed in the second Test at the Basin Reserve, where the visitors won, but scored 130 at Mount Maunganui and 176 at Hamilton, both drawn. At Hamilton he equalled Crowe’s New Zealand record of 17 Test hundreds; he did not seem to care about that: the result was what mattered.
New Zealand doubtless relished beating England – doubtless still suffering from their mauling by Australia – in the home series in 2017-18. Williamson secured a curious record in the first Test at Auckland, where England were bowled out on the first morning for 38: he became the first batsmen to outscore the opposition by the end of the match’s second session – he was on 59 not out and went on to make 102. In the course of the ODI series, which England won, Williamson became the fifth fastest player to reach 5,000 ODI runs, after Hashim Amla, Kohli, Viv Richards and Brian Lara. He scored 89 and 139 in the series clinching victory over Pakistan at Abu Dhabi in November 2018.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” This familiar quote surely summarises any New Zealand player or supporter after the extraordinary World Cup final between England and New Zealand at Lord’s in 2019, notoriously won by England “by the barest of margins”. Indeed allrounder Jimmy Neesham said as much, more graphically, soon after the match. The tournament had been a triumph for New Zealand and their captain. A triumph, that is, until about five minutes before the fiftieth and final over of England’s innings. Williamson was the player of the tournament, making 578 runs at an average of 82.57, with two hundreds.
I watched one of those centuries from the press box at Edgbaston. It was the group match against South Africa, which South Africa really needed to win in order to go any further. [An account of the game was posted here on 20 June 2019.]
South Africa made 232. New Zealand’s top order struggled; even Williamson, as always, at number three, could not get going. They lurched from 72 for one to 80 for four and they were not keeping up with the run rate. Colin de Grandhomme provided some much-needed momentum, but when he was out more wickets fell and Mitchell Santner came in to join Williamson, 12 were needed of seven balls. Williamson executed one of his delicious late cuts for four. Santner got a single off the first ball of the final over, bowled by Andile Phehlukwayo, giving Williamson the strike. He simply stepped out and hit the next ball over midwicket for the only six of his innings. That took his score to 102, but that was irrelevant to him. The next ball was glided down to third man for four. You can imagine the excitement on and off the pitch, as the match reached its climax: Williamson was, as the Wisden match report put it, “as cool as a hired gun”.
New Zealand’s greatest triumph under Williamson was their success in the first edition of the World Test Championship. One can argue about the merits of the competition but the fact is that New Zealand qualified for the final and deserved to do so. Quite apart from anything else they did more than any country, together with England to keep cricket going during the pandemic. They had clean sweeps at home against India and West Indies in 2020, Williamson making his highest score, 251, against the latter at Hamilton. The final, against India at Southampton in June 2021. New Zealand won a game that was closer than the result makes it appear by eight wickets on the sixth day. It was entirely appropriate that Williamson and Taylor were together in the middle when the final runs were scored.
Williamson also led his side to the final of the Men’s T20 World Cup in Dubai. He top-scored with 85 in New Zealand’s innings – in fact it was the top score in the match – but Australia overwhelmed their opponents by eight wickets.
Williamson stepped down as captain in 2022 and was succeeded by Tim Southee. He had averaged 57 as captain and celebrated his return to the ranks with a double century against Pakistan at Karachi. He remained one-day captain and led New Zealand in the Men’s World Cup of 2023-24. They reached the semi-final in Mumbai, where they came up against Kohli at his best. Williamson top scored for New Zealand.
He remained in sublime form in Tests. He failed against England at Mount Maunganui in February 2023, where the visitors won by 267 runs, but in the second, at the Basin Reserve, he made 132 in New Zealand’s second innings; they went on to win the match by one run after following on. In the first Test against Sri Lanka at Christchurch a few weeks later he made yet another fourth innings century, 121 not out, guiding New Zealand to a two wicket win off the last possible ball of the match. In the second Test, at the Basin Reserve, Williamson (215) and Henry Nicholls (200 not out) added 363 for the third wicket.
The unsatisfactory series against South Africa in 2023-24 – unsatisfactory because it was effectively a South African third eleven – was in a sense Williamson’s last hurrah. New Zealand won the series two-nil, their series victory over those opponents since 1931-32. Williamson made two centuries in the first Test at Mount Maunganui, and a third in the second Test at Hamilton, another fourth innings match winner. It was noted in the Wisden match report that his partner was nine months pregnant with their third child and that his beloved golden retriever had died just before the match started. “it appeared nothing could distract him.”
He missed the triumph in India under Tom Latham through injury but returned for the home three-match series against England in December 2024, making his 33rd and final Test century, 156, in New Zealand’s victory in the third Test at Hamilton; he was the first player to score five successive centuries at the same ground. He averaged 65.83 in the series.
Williamson will be remembered as one of cricket’s greatest players and also as one of its greatest ambassadors. In a funny sort of way his finest hour came in the aftermath of that Lord’s final in 2019. Remember, England were the winners but it was hard to say that New Zealand had lost. England had won by scoring more boundaries, scores being level after the super-over. Williamson came out to a press conference after the game, calm as ever, and said “Laugh or cry – it’s your choice isn’t it?” There was no suggestion of complaint or discontent. Williamson will be missed, and not just in New Zealand. We will be lucky to see his like again.
