Kane Williamson has eclipsed all before him in New Zealand cricket, now only rivaled when looking to the greats across the globe, with his sixth double-century in Test cricket. Kane Williamson was at his spectacular best in Karachi, driving his team to a large first-innings lead and doing most of the heavy work with the lower order, passing Brendon McCullum to claim the New Zealand Test double-century record outright.
Six wickets down after exceeding Pakistan’s 438, Kane Williamson was superb with the tail, highlighted by a 154-run stand with Ish Sodhi at No.8, the innings’ second-highest partnership. He brilliantly hid No.11, Ajaz Patel, to achieve the milestone, bringing up his 200 with a single off Abrar Ahmed’s spin.
ICC, Records Broken
After reaching the mark, new skipper Tim Southee called his previous captain in for New Zealand’s declaration, ensuring Kane Williamson’s ten-hour stint at the bat, which featured 21 fours and a six, would go spotless. After unexpectedly relinquishing the Test captaincy to Southee a fortnight ago, the cricket world was curious to see what Williamson could do without the pressure of the job, and the 32-year-old showed us a guy who is possibly even better with the bat.
Williamson’s Karachi innings showed a clear mind: confident in his footwork and strokeplay, but also eagle-eyed in concentration, having overturned two lbw rulings on 13 and 116. If this is a sample of what Kane Williamson can do in the red-ball format without leadership, his batting averages might skyrocket. Williamson currently has the greatest batting average of 65.50 among players who have played at least five Test matches since 2019, beating out Marnus Labuschagne (62.29) and colleague Daryl Mitchell (61.43).
Williamson only comparable to all-time greats
That’s even if he doesn’t score a Test century between January 2021 and his double century in Karachi. While the match statistics indicate that the circumstances were favorable for batting, it was easy to forget that this was Williamson’s and all of his teammates’ maiden Test participation. The 32-year-old demonstrated that he was perfectly at home in Tauranga, as the century meant that he had now hit Test hundreds in 11 different countries, including the West Indies nations of Barbados and Jamaica.
In terms of cashing in while on the song, Williamson only compares to luminaries at the top of the game’s all-time list. Only a dozen players have more double hundreds than Kane Williamson’s five in the 145-year history of Test cricket, and he’s one away from joining half a dozen of those above: Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Younis Khan, Javed Miandad, Virender Sehwag, and Marvin Atapattu. Williamson has time on his side as well, with at least 25 innings on five of those guys.
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Williamson has four of his five doubles in the previous four years, and after his most recent outing, the right-hander underlined his straightforward approach to hitting. Anytime you go out to bat, you want to prepare as best as you can and commit to your plans,” Williamson said, after becoming the first New Zealander with over 1000 Test runs against Pakistan. Kane Williamson, as always, was quick to praise the efforts of his teammates. It was great to spend so much time with so many other men who contributed so much. We knew we wanted to bat longer today in order to get a few extra runs on the board. Ish Sodhi’s assistance with the bat was really essential.
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