King Kane’s killer Kiwis to let fly in Land of Oz

NEW Zealand’s highly rated Test side arrives on Saturday, the equally highly rated captain Kane Williamson with a spring in his step after completing a series victory over England this week, the team no doubt excited about playing at the SCG and MCG for the first time since the mid-1980s.

Australia does not play many games against their closest neighbour, at times adopting the disdain an adolescent youth can have for the little brother who wants to hang out with the big kids.

The Kiwis have won just three of 31 games on these shores. They took out the 1985 series 2-1, inspired by Richard Hadlee’s 33 wickets.

The next and only time New Zealand tasted victory was the match held at Hobart’s Bellerive Oval played over five days in 2011. The visitors had lost the first Test by nine wickets, but fared better in the second and last game of the series.

It was a game that stays in the mind for a number of reasons. Ricky Ponting remembers opening bat, Brendon McCullum, telling him to keep an eye on a young batsman called Kane Williamson. He was going to be “one of the best in the world” the veteran told the then Australian captain.

Williamson had scored a century on debut in India, but was a work in progress. Ponting, who left the game with only one hundred in that country himself, was cynical but accepts now that McCullum was on to something.

“He’s a bit like Smithy, he’s very regimented in the way he plays, he plays the ball late, he doesn’t get a big stride at the ball,” Ponting said of Williamson to cricket.com.au.

“But he’s just really hard to get out so I’m looking forward to the battle between him and our quicks.”

Williamson is one of the game’s finest bats. His numbers: 21 centuries at an average of 53 put him in the rare air occupied by Steve Smith and Virat Kohli.

In the years since 2014 Smith (5478 at 77), Williamson (3684 at 65) and Kohli (5347 at 64) have dominated Test cricket. The ICC player rankings released this week have them arranged one to three in this order: Indian, Australian, Kiwi.

At five with a bullet is another Aussie. David Warner has hurtled back into the charts on the back of the 489 runs he scored from two innings against Pakistan.

Warner made his debut in that 2011 series, missing out in the first three innings but digging in to score an undefeated 123 in Hobart that got Australia within seven runs of the required total before he ran out of partners.

Warner batted all five hours of the innings when only Phillip Hughes managed to last more than hour at the crease.

Losing to the visitors at home for the first time in a quarter of a century saw both Hughes and Usman Khawaja dropped from the side.