He’ll be fine but he needs time to adapt
The funny thing about stress and pressure is that the more you experience, the better you become at dealing with it. You learn through experience. Something which seemed impossible to deal with the first time you go through it becomes a lot easier with a bit of practice.
So while Kane Williamson will no doubt have felt the immense pressure of his first New Zealand summer as Black Caps captain, he’ll be in a better position to deal with it next time around.
He’ll know to put his foot down and say no to certain commitments, have his press conference answers rehearsed after inevitable close losses to better teams and have improved situational awareness on the field.
So while the temptation must be there to drop the captaincy from one of the formats, New Zealand will be a better team with him at the helm in all three formats.
As Brendon McCullum wrote in his book, he used the T20 captaincy to experiment for the longer forms of the game. Having that chance to work on things made him a better captain, which in turn made the Black Caps better.
If Williamson gives that up, the team will be worse off for it.
And who exactly is going to take over in the other formats?
Let’s start with the situation where Williamson gives up the T20 and/or 50-over captaincy.
Bowlers, especially fast opening bowlers, can’t be captains.
They’re too singularly focused in the field, especially in the crucial opening and finishing stages of the limited overs stuff, that it’s too hard for them to be effective captains. So that rules out Tim Southee and Trent Boult. Who else is left? Ross Taylor has done his dash as captain and seems too much of a lone wolf.
The same could be said for Martin Guptill while the only other limited overs regulars in recent times have been Jimmy Neesham, Colin de Grandhomme and Mitchell Santner, with only the latter shaping as captaincy material at this stage.
In the test arena, Tom Latham appeals as the heir apparent, but if he doesn’t start scoring runs soon he’ll be dropped, plus there isn’t another test match scheduled this year so there’s no real need to change things there.
Really, what Williamson needs to do is treat the upcoming Indian Premier League as a paid working holiday.
Don’t take it too seriously and freshen up before the Champions Trophy. The Black Caps don’t have another match scheduled after that, so there’s your real holiday.
Enjoy it and come back knowing you’ll be better prepared to cope with the pressure of the home summer captaining New Zealand in all three formats.
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