Former New Zealand captain Kane Williamson revealed that a phone call with Indian stalwart Virat Kohli a day before his retirement announcement helped him finalize his decision to step away from international cricket.
Williamson retired from all international cricket with immediate effect in June this year, midway through New Zealand's three-match Test series in England.
Speaking on the Between Two Beers podcast, Williamson noted that he and Kohli experienced remarkably similar career trajectories—sharing long stints at the top level, heavy captaincy responsibilities, and growing their families around the same time.
The legendary Kiwi batter said talking to Kohli felt like looking in the mirror because of how deeply they understood the pressures and evolution of motivation over a 16-year career.
“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.
“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.
Despite sitting fewer than 500 runs away from becoming the first New Zealander to reach 10,000 Test runs, Kane Williamson called it quits after the opening Test against England at Lord's.
The 36-year-old stated that personal milestones were never his motivation and that he did not want to hold onto a spot merely for a farewell tour.
“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,” Williamson remarked.
“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.
