Kane Williamson, and the curse of being a Kiwi

Kane Williamson does not get to play enough test matches being a New Zealand cricketer and that is adversely affecting his career stats.

Momentum gone

In the beginning of 2021, Kane Williamson had already scored 7115 runs in test cricket with the help of 24 centuries. Come June 2022 and while Joe Root who had 7823 runs with just 17 centuries in test cricket at the same time has raced to over 10000 runs with 26 centuries.

Of course, a lot of that has to do with the brilliant form of Root but one cannot discount the fact that teams like England and India get to play a lot more test matches then the likes of New Zealand and West Indies.

As a result, Williamson hasn't been able to score runs at the pace of some of his contemporaries. Currently, he has 7289 runs from 87 test matches at an average of 52.81 with 24 centuries and 33 half centuries.

Only behind Ross Taylor

He's only behind Ross Taylor in the all time list for New Zealand but injuries and lopsided scheduling has slowed down his career a great deal.

Williamson played a match winning knock for New Zealand in the final of the inaugural world test Championship but hasn't been able to sustain his form. He had a terrible IPL, captaining Sunrisers Hyderabad and has not been able to do well for New Zealand in test cricket as well.

Another failure

This is what the Kiwi skipper had to say after New Zealand lost the first match of their three match series against England by 5 wickets with Williamson managing scores of 2 off 22 balls and 15 off 34 balls in the match.

"We saw how difficult batting was when the ball was hard. Both teams fought hard. We hoped for some assistance from the overheads when we came today but it wasn't to be. It is about moving on quickly and taking the learnings - whether it is quality from the opposition quality, whether it is our own. We thought we could take the game a bit longer. But it was a fantastic game, finely balanced. Everybody wants to be contributing more. Definitely top order runs would help, but we saw the assistance with the harder ball and how tough it was for top order, so it's those fine margins."