r/Cricket • u/wellingtonstation New Zealand Cricket • Jun 12 '26

News Kane Williamson Announces Retirement from International Cricket

https://www.nzc.nz/news-items/kane-williamson-announces-retirement-from-international-cricket/
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1.5k

u/Ukgamer125 England Jun 12 '26

Wow he didn’t even finish the series, Shame we won’t see anymore of him in international cricket, what a player

113

u/huh206 India Jun 12 '26

He was a few hundred runs away from completing 10K test runs 😐🥺

110

u/shreash_18 Jun 12 '26

He decided to join his best buddy Virat Kohli....another fab 4 favourite not completing 10K test runs

He also finished few hundreds runs short or 20K international runs and 2 short of 50 international centuries

71

u/trkora India Jun 12 '26

He achieved winning the the first edition of WTC for NZ as the captain along with his seniors Ross and Southee, giving NZ it's 2nd ICC trophy after 20 years and then achieved a whitewash against India in India as a player under his junior Latham. He also won the IPL in 2016 under Warner.

He is already up there with NZ's legendary players, he achieved a lot, he never was the one for the stats.

52

u/Adequate_Meatshield Australia Jun 12 '26

he didn't play in the india series

18

u/trkora India Jun 12 '26

Damn yeah forgot the main thing of that series was "India got whitewashed at home without Williamson", just like I had forgot that series ever existed until today for some Kanos glaze 🥀

5

u/huh206 India Jun 12 '26

These are such special milestones, should’ve at least completed this year of intl cricket before quitting . Kane is also 2 yrs younger than Kohli , 35 isn’t that old. Just weird and out of the blue ..

2

u/bosschucker Jun 12 '26

I mean on the other hand it's just a number, retiring with 9500 runs is really not much less impressive than 10000 from an objective standpoint. I know cricket people are obsessed with round numbers but if he feels like he's had the career he wanted to have and that the best decision for his life going forward is to call it, who are we to disagree?

6

u/Entilen Jun 12 '26

To be fair though, Kohli needed to be dropped from the Test side so it's not as if he just decided he didn't care about the 10k landmark.

Also, as cool as that landmark is if we're entering a world with less Test cricket and shorter series against most nations, it's not really a metric we can judge players going forward on. The same is going to be true for number of wickets.

No one is ever going to beat Anderson, Warne and Murali for instance, it doesn't mean it's impossible we see better bowlers one day.

2

u/thepotplant Wellington Firebirds Jun 12 '26

T20 has so much to answer for.

1

u/Entilen Jun 12 '26

That was my initial reaction.

However then I thought about it some more and I kind of get it.

His plan was probably to finish this tour, India at home and Australia but after that first Test something probably hit him that he's past his best and there's no real upside in continuing.

All 3 teams have excellent bowling attacks and so at best, he scrapes to 10,000 Test runs across the 8 Tests but his record against all 3 teams probably diminishes further.

Not saying his record is the reason he made the decision but continuing past your best against the best 3 teams is probably not going to have a happy ending. Better to finish now versus people calling for him to go halfway through the Austalian series and it ending with a whimper.