‘I HAD MY LITTLE MINIATURE BAT AND PROBABLY DROVE MY DAD NUTS’

Mr Williamson sits on his sofa at home in Tauranga, on New Zealand’s North Island, trying to watch the television, circa 1993.

“Dad,” says a three-yearold boy, holding a cricket bat as usual.

“Yes, son. What is it?” “Please bowl to me, dad.” “All right, Kane, give me the ball.”

The boy has a twin brother, Logan, who is not really interested in cricket, and three elder sisters, but they do not play at all. So, it has to be Mr Williamson who lobs a soft ball, which the child prodigy hits around the living-room.

Around the world, three other boys of almost the same age are likewise programming the synapses of their brains to pick up the trajectory and pace of a cricket ball quicker than their contemporaries. The boy in Sheffield is called Joe, the one in Delhi called Virat, the one in Sydney is called Steve. One of these four, in 18 months from now, will probably be crowned the world’s best batsman in succession to AB de Villiers.

The outsider

Williamson could be rated the outsider, partly because he bats at No 3, while the others prefer the softer option of four. But this race is no sprint; and Williamson is the calmest of the four, perhaps partly because he lives in a country where cricket plays third fiddle to rugby, so he faces fewer media and public pressures than the others.

“I had my little miniature bat and probably drove my dad nuts,” Kane says in the modest, self-effacing manner that has never changed. “He’d sit there and watch telly, watching the news or something, and he’d be throwing me the ball and I’d hit the ball back on the full so he didn’t have to move off the couch. And the ball in the sock in the carport — it’s just what you enjoy doing when you’re really young, spending hours in little competitions with myself. And there was a stump and a golf ball — I drilled a hole through the ball and tied a string through it.

“Then I broke one of my grandad’s golf clubs so I had a golf shaft to bat with. I was fortunate our house backed on to a primary school. Dad and a couple of other guys fundraised and put in cricket nets and an artificial cricket pitch — there hadn’t been one before — and that was brilliant.”

His idols? “I always enjoyed watching Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting but I really liked watching Jacques Kallis as well.”

Kane Williamson | New Zealand captain

Respect for the game

David Johnston, whom Williamson credits with being his main batting coach in Tauranga, recalls his relentless appetite for runs. “Through his teenage years he scored a multitude of runs and centuries, all completed with the same calmness and skill he continues to display at international level — and most importantly the same humility and respect for the game and those involved in it, including the opposition, officials and volunteers. He was a tremendous youngster and is now equally a fantastic young man.”

What drives him? “I do like to train and improve,” he says.

Johnston agreed: “Kane’s always competing with himself, not others.”