After New Zealand’s seminal triumph in their hard-fought, wildly fluctuating Test series against West Indies, Kane Williamson described the team as “a positive and a good young group that can win a lot in the coming years and ultimately move higher and higher in the rankings.”
It was impossible to deny his optimism. The average age of the squad that completed its first overseas triumph against significant opponents in 12 years was 26; only the confident, assertive captain Brendon McCullum, 33, and Ross Taylor, 30, were older.
Williamson himself is 23 and already spoken of back home in the same breath as Martin Crowe, even by Crowe himself. Player of the Series, his 113 in the first Test at Sabina Park and unbeaten 161 in the third at Kensington Oval was high class batting that lifted his tally to seven hundreds, the same number as Crowe’s at the same age.
