'Fab Four' of the modern generation: A comprehensive career review

#3 Kane Williamson (New Zealand)

Pakistan v New Zealand - 1st One Day International

Coming from a family where all of his family members were involved in different sports, be it cricket, volleyball and football, it was no surprise that Kane also had an interest in sports and he chose cricket following his father and by now has established himself as a most important player for New Zealand Cricket Team.

The greatness of Kane was predicted from his U-19 days where it was expected that Williamson would become the backbone of the New Zealand batting line-up one day. He also had leadership skills in abundance from his U-19 days and as expected he became the captain of New Zealand team.

Rising to all the expectations, Kane Williamson made his international debut at the age of just 20 in 2010 in Sri Lanka for tri-series that also featured India. His white ball career started as a tragedy as he registered ducks in his first two matches.

But he soon proved his mettle by scoring a century against Bangladesh later that year. His red ball debut came soon but it was on a tough and challenging tour to India. But Williamson rose to the occasion and made a statement by scoring a century on debut that too in subcontinental conditions.

Williamson continued to pile on runs but not at that consistency that was expected from him. He changed that in 2014 tour to India where he scored five fifty-plus scores in five ODI matches and broke a heap of records.

He became only second batsman to score fifty-plus scores in all five games of a series. He became only fourth New Zealand batsman to score five consecutive fifty-plus scores and also holds the records for most number of the fifties in series by a New Zealand player.

2015 is considered to be the career-defining year for him. He notched up 1172 runs in tests in that year at an unimaginable average of 90 and also scored 1376 runs in ODIs at an average of 57. He was instrumental in New Zealand's journey to the finals of WC 2015. He scored runs again different bowlers effortlessly and made the bowling attacks look blunt against him.

Soon he was given the responsibility of captaining the team in all three formats after the retirement of Brendon McCullum from all forms of international cricket in early 2016 just before the T20 WC in India.

He has performed fairly well as captain but still needs to learn a lot as captain. One thing that stands out in his captaincy is his tactical smartness and awareness of the game situation.

He is not rated very highly as a T20 batsman. But he performed decently in 2017 IPL for SRH whenever he got an opportunity. But he changed the perception of people to a great extent in IPL 2018 where he led his team to final and also won the Orange Cap for scoring 735 runs at an average of above 52 and at 140+ strike rate.

He is a completely flawless and classical batsman who is a delight to watch with a perfect footwork and strokeplay. He mainly plays the role of anchor in limited-overs cricket. If he can score runs little more quickly in white ball cricket, he would become a phenomenal batsman.

Kane Williamson is an irreplaceable player for New Zealand both as a batsman and as a captain and the team would largely depend on him to get hold of the ICC World Cup for the first time in 2019.