Virat Kohli, Steven Smith, Joe Root, and Kane Williamson were touted as ‘Fab Four’ by the late Martin Crow back in 2014. As it turned out, all four of them went on to prove their mettle across formats and helped their teams bag a few ICC trophies along the way.
However, in recent months, the elite group has started to bid farewell from one format or the other. While all of them are still active in at least one format of international cricket, the eyes are on the next generation of talented batters who can justify the tag of ‘Fab Four’.
According to Williamson, the Indian duo of Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill, New Zealand’s Rachin Ravindra and England’s Harry Brook could be the successors to ‘Fab Four’.
“The players that come to mind in terms of multi-format are: Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Rachin Ravindra, Harry Brook. And also Cam Green. Those are all outstanding players and have shown fantastic moments in all formats. All young and their games are just growing,” said Williamson while speaking to The Cricket Monthly.
However, unlike the previous generation, the problem the current set of players face is the expansion of T20 leagues and lucrative deals being offered by the franchises.
While Jaiswal, Gill, and Brook come from the big three (India, England, and Australia), and they can be compensated well by their respective boards because of healthier economic conditions, Rachin needs to find the right balance in the format he chooses.
“I suppose the more you do it, the more lessons you have. Ultimately, it is an opportunity to try and get an understanding of how you want to do it. And before you get exposed to it [at international level], you are probably playing domestic cricket, which generally is played in windows – you have red-ball [competition] and then you might have your one-day competition, followed by your T20 competition. So there’s not a lot of quick crossover that really demands you to change your game and then go back to [the previous] format,” Williamson stated.
“I feel personally grateful that I was brought up in that red-ball era. It’s still there, but I mean the T20 format is so prominent now, where the volume that you play is so high. So the opportunity to bat long, but also the opportunity to really go through those different problem-solving elements in the game [is not there]. You are playing a game for five days, it challenges you in every aspect, your ability to focus, to be patient, your temperament to adjust a plan… and you can get exposed in a big way in the red-ball game. So you are always trying to problem-solve. And the conditions change a lot more in red-ball cricket. So there’s these elements that you don’t necessarily get, and certainly not [in the same] volume, in the white-ball game,” he further remarked.
