The Four Horsemen

Hello and welcome back to my blog

With all the gloom-and-doom forecasting for test cricket I really hope the oracles are wrong.  If this decade marks the apocalypse of test cricket then we are faced with a strange quartet of horsemen to bring it about.  In Virat Kohli, Steven Smith, Joe Root and Kane Williamson cricket has four master batsmen to enjoy for the next 10 years: all from different backgrounds, different cultures and different teams.  Each has his own style but each is a batting genius in his own right.

I once saw an interview with Sir. Ian Botham regarding the competition between him and the other great allrounders in 1980s (Hadlee, Khan and Dev) in which he admitted that they all closely followed each other’s exploits.  Audiences did too and the idea of two of them facing each other across a test series was worth the admission fee alone.  In Kohli, Smith, Root and Williamson I hope we have a similar group of players to draw the people to the grounds.

Consider the following records:

VIRAT KOHLI - 42* tests, 3194 runs @ 46.29 with 12 centuries

STEVEN SMITH - 41 tests, 3852 runs @ 60.18 with 14 centuries

JOE ROOT - 44* tests, 3804 runs @ 55.13 with 10 centuries

KANE WILLIAMSON - 48 tests, 4037 runs @ 49.23 with 13 centuries

NOTE: although Kohli’s mastery of test cricket has not quite blossomed the same as the other 3, his master of limited-overs cricket is so far ahead that I believe he warrants inclusion.

These four batsmen – aged between 25 and 27 at the moment – have established themselves at the forefront of their own teams and now their generation.  Kohli with his belligerent, nothing-is-impossible style, Smith’s unorthodox but compelling technique, Root’s determined throw-back to the text-book and Williamson’s cold yet carefree demeanour are so different from one another but all succeed in their own right; it is a great balance of approaches and a fine example to young players.

I have no doubt that if he wants it, Kohli will compile a record similar to Tendulkar (that is if he can play enough test cricket) and the real question is whether he has the same hunger for run-making that his predecessor had.  Steven Smith faces a different battle due to his unusual technique – it looks like genius when he’s scoring runs but (like Chanderpual in this sense) it will took terrible when he is out of form; can he adapt his game as he gets older and more experienced to succeed consistently.  Root is the youngest of the four and the most recent to achieve god-like status in his own team so how he gets through a season out of form will be interesting, but like all English sportsman he will have to carry the hopes of a very passionate and unforgiving sporting nation.  Similar could be said of Williamson but my real fear for him is how the captaincy of the weakest of the four teams will drain on his batting powers.  Captaincy is a challenge they all face/will face during their time at the top of the cricketing world but for Williamson it is the bigger threat.

Watching how these players cope with the expectation placed on them - by themselves let alone others – will be fascinating in the years to come and, I pray, their successes will play some part in avoiding the requiem knell of test cricket.

Well that's it from here and I hope you join me again
It's good bye for now