ICC World Test Championship.

[K]

New Zealand make history by winning
inaugural World Test Championship

India 217 & 170
NZ 249 & 2/140

NZ won by 8 wickets.

4th innings:
Ashwin 2/17 (10)
Kane Williamson 52*(89)
Ross Taylor 47* (100)


Player of the Match: Kyle Jamieson
5/31 (12) & 2/30 (24); 21 (16).


A great match of Test cricket. The quality of play proved that these two teams deserved to be finalists. And a fairytale result for NZ, with Ross Taylor and Kane Williamson, who have done so much for NZ cricket, guiding their team home with an unbeaten 96-run partnership. Taylor hit the winning runs. He was almost lost to cricket after he lost the captaincy amid cricket politics and backstabbing. It must have made things easier when Baz M. retired and Williamson took over. If only Martin Crowe could have been here to see this.

Kane showed again why he is the best batsman in the world. His 101 runs for the match for once out must be easily the highest total. He and Virat embraced warmly after the match.

And for Kyle Jamieson, the sky is the limit.


Congratulations, NZ, World Test Champions!

[K]

A. Miller, cricinfo:

"In a recent interview with the ICC, Taylor admitted that, had the 2019 final not turned out as it did, he might not have had the drive to take his career into this, his 14th year. A farewell on home soil might be tempting, but for New Zealand's greatest Test run-scorer, stages do not get more fitting than this.

At the other end, throughout his unbeaten 96-run stand for the third wicket, Williamson exuded a level of certainty that no other player came close to matching all Test. Calm and calibrated, his astonishment at being given out lbw on 1 was vindicated by DRS on review. And he barely played another false shot until the ball before his fifty, an ugly hoick that just eluded Jasprit Bumrah's fingers at third man.

Taylor, by contrast, brought little but revolting pugnacity to the table, but it was precisely the mettle that the moment needed."

[Pies4shaw]

They do talk drivel in the media at times.

Williamson's Test averages in countries outside NZ where the opposition is more or less competent are now:

- in Australia - 42.84
- in England - 32.90
- in India 35.46
- in Sri Lanka 26.71
- in South Africa - 21.16.

He does like those home pitches (65.31), although his liking for the pitches, even at home, plainly depends on who he's playing.

He's also very good in countries where the opposition isn't so good - Zimbabwe an almost Bradman-like 97.25, in Bangladesh 83.33, in the UAE (all against Pakistan) 64.70, in the West Indies 51.33.

Head to head against Australia, it's obvious that Williamson is the very definition of a "flat track bully". He has scored just 2 centuries against Australia. Each was scored in the second of the four innings in a match in which the opposition had posted over 550 and declared. In the first, he made 140 after Warner had made 163 and Khawaja had made 174 (Australia declared at 4/556). In the second, he made 166 (in the same innings, Ross Taylor made 290) after Warner made 253 and Khawaja 121. Otherwise, it is notable that the highest score Williamson has made against Australia in the opening innings of a Test is 22 (in Adelaide) and - apart from those two hundreds on very, very flat wickets, he has managed just two 50s against Australia. One of those was in his second innings of the Test on the extraordinarily flat track on which he made 140 (NZ lost the Test, despite Australia only losing 8 wickets for 820 runs across its two innings) and the other was in the third of the four innings of a Test in Christchurch in which, in the opening innings of the match, Williamson made 7 from 69 balls and McCullum promptly made 145 from 79 balls, in the next innings Burns made 170 and Smith 138 and, in the final innings, chasing victory, Burns made 65 and Smith knocked off the victory with 53* from 46 balls.

Thus, he's a bit like Doug Walters - dangerous on home pitches and a bit useless elsewhere. He's not as good a batsman as Walters was, of course - Walters could turn a game in 2 hours - but there are similarities.

He's a solid player - very good in NZ (except against good opposition) but outside NZ he's probably not even in the top 20 batsman in the World. Indeed, if you look at Test averages on "away" pitches by batsmen in the last 10 years, his average is just 41.36, which doesn't even put him in the top 50: https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=1;home_or_away=2;orderby=batting_average;spanmax1=24+Jun+2021;spanmin1=24+Jun+2011;spanval1=span;template=results;type=batting

That is simply not the record of "the best batsman in the World". Amongst players who played at least 3 away Tests in that period, the 3 top averages are Sangakkara (69.4 across 11 Tests), Chanderpaul (64.13 across 16 Tests) and, of course, the actual article - Steve Bradsmith (60.15 across 35 Tests, with 13 100s and 14 50s). Only Kohli has achieved comparable milestones to Smith (14 100s and 13 50s - but in 47 Tests and at an average of 45.07).