Australian media give high praise to Williamson

Kane Williamson earned plaudits from teammates and Australian media after his century. Photo / Getty

Kane Williamson's terrific century at the Gabba yesterday has drawn high praise from Australian media.

Williamson's 140, one of five centuries in the first three innings of the opening test, marks him out as one of the game's finest batsmen.

"It was impossible to watch Williamson's total domination of high-quality Australian fast bowling in local conditions and not conclude that we were seeing one of the next super batsmen of international cricket," wrote Malcolm Knox in the Sydney Morning Herald.

"Every seven balls he faced, Williamson hit a boundary, distributed evenly around the ground as if he was handing out merchandise and making sure nobody missed out."
His batting had ''no trigger movements, no guesswork, no eccentricities; just textbook cricket shots played as if in front of a mirror".

Knox even invoked the legendary Don Bradman's name in extolling Williamson's batting virtues.

''It always loses the argument to invoke the B-word, but Williamson's batting brought to mind what they said about Bradman: no particular flamboyance or flourish, no muscular power, simply a mechanical ability to hit the ball through the gaps.

''And what's that, he's a hundred already."

In the Sun Herald, Jon Pierik described Williamson as ''superb, and completed one of the best knocks on Australian soil in recent years. He had all the shots".

Robert Craddock in the Sunday Telegraph believes Williamson can take New Zealand batting into ''a stratosphere it has never visited before.

''The way Williamson batted against the Australian quicks stamped him as a truly special playler and a 50-plus average man in the making".

And Ben Dorries in the Courier Mail placed Williamson alongside Australian captain Steven Smith, David Warner, India's Virat Kohli, England's Joe Root and South African AB de Villiers as ''the world's best batsmen, they are all excitement machines you would pay money to watch".

By David Leggat in Brisbane