Former New Zealand batter Kane Williamson revealed that talking to his close friend Virat Kohli played a major role in deciding on his international retirement. Just like Kohli, Williamson also bid adieu to the red-ball format short of the 10,000-run mark.
The ace New Zealand batter Williamson played 110 Tests, scoring 9515 runs at an average of 54.06. Meanwhile, Kohli amassed 9230 runs in 123 Tests at an average of 46.85. Speaking on a podcast, Williamson recalled his special relationship with the Indian talismanic batter.
“I spoke to a number of people I trust, and I’ve been really, really close with. And then I actually had a really, really cool chat with Virat like the day before I announced it, and it was really like looking in the mirror, just sharing the experiences that we’ve had in the game for so long,” Williamson said on the ‘Between the Two Beers’ podcast.
“He’s (Kohli) still playing a little bit, but largely he made some of those big decisions and that like, honestly just cheering. There’s no one else, I think, even players in your own team from, at times, that have just been in that exact same position for the exact same length of time, captaincy roles, children at the same time. Like we sort of live this parallel thing. We had a really quite special relationship, but although different worlds, and it was just quite a cool thing to be able to share some of that real vulnerable stuff and how you were feeling and just connect over it and it and I was like, I walked out of there, or I got off the phone, my wife walked into the hotel room, and I was like, it’s time,” he added.
Further, Williamson said he was never driven by the personal goal of completing 10,000 Test runs. He explained that players should not allow their careers to be driven by public recognition or personal records.
“You don’t do it for those reasons. But if they’re no longer yours and there was a term that he did use, and it was this idea that you can start playing for the gallery. You can start, like holding on or doing things for reasons that aren’t just I use the word pure, maybe like for your own measure of it, but that aren’t just you that drive you back to the craft and to being a part of the team,” he noted.
“Every interview I did, they would ask about it, and they were never the things that drove me; it wasn’t a number. It wasn’t to get to 10,000 runs to a point where I genuinely believe that if that was a goal of mine at the start, I wouldn’t be close. We wouldn’t sit here and even reference it, because what is your definition of success? Is it an average? Is it a certain number of hundreds? They’re essentially limitations, and often you might have a successful career but probably fall short because your goals are lofty, and I don’t know, it wouldn’t have been true to me,” he concluded.
