The greatest internationals of the century: Nos. 16 to 14

16. Kane Williamson

by Alagappan Muthu
Overall: 19,292 runs at 49.49 ave; 73 wickets
For the longest time, Martin Crowe was the standard-bearer for batting in New Zealand but as soon as he saw this prodigy, he knew his successor had arrived. Williamson's technique, built on playing the ball as late as possible, ticked all the boxes. A foundation that made him good enough against almost all kinds of bowling - particularly high pace - and allowed him to thrive in almost all conditions meant he became New Zealand's top run-getter in Test cricket.

There was always a calmness that he brought to the cricket, which rubbed off on his team-mates and made him a perfect fit for the No. 3 position, and the captaincy. He won New Zealand a first world title - the inaugural Test Championship in 2021 - and was a central figure as they transformed from a team broken by infighting during the early 2010s to one that leveraged their unity to beat opponents who often had more resources and more talent. Their run to the finals of the 2015 and 2019 World Cups were cases in point - Williamson averaged 82.57 in the latter despite often having to mop up after early wickets fell. It earned him the sobriquet "steady the ship", a testament to how he kept an even keel at the roughest times for New Zealand cricket.

Neil Wagner on Williamson: Definitely, he's right up there. It's so hard to put everything about him into words. I think it's the way he trains, how particular he is - he hits the most balls and trains the longest of everyone. You know, a lot of guys will be pretty cooked after training sessions and ready to go back to the hotel, but he finds a way of hitting extra balls and doing the extra time.

Bowling to him in the nets, you sort of felt like you always wanted to bowl your best balls to him. I always felt I upped my game to him to some degree. He left well and he defended well. As soon as you bowled a bad ball, he capitalised on it. But you never felt like you had any chance. I felt that I had to bowl my very best ball to nick him off, which I very seldom did. The cool thing that I found with Kane was that nothing really fazed him. I think he adapted faster to trickier situations than other guys did. He always led from the front - the way he trained, the way he handled himself in the media, the things he said, are something that everybody else aspired to do and wanted to achieve. Everybody wanted to follow him.

15. Jasprit Bumrah

by Osman Samiuddin
Overall: 486 wickets at 20.60 average
The strange, stiff-armed action. The momentum-killing stutter, totter and trot through to the crease. The broader environs, historically so hostile to fast bowling. How easy could it have been, ask yourself, for Jasprit Bumrah to go all wrong? Or, at best, to have remained an oddity who succeeded only in T20s because his yorker was crazy good. And yet, here we are, a decade later, marvelling at how it has gone about as right as it has ever done for a fast bowler.

Seriously, the numbers are one thing, and there's almost no Statsguru filter through which he looks anything less than extraordinary. The spectacle of watching him, though, that is another immeasurable thing entirely. The expectation nearly every ball that magic is about to happen, that the magic could happen at any moment, no matter if it's the first ball of a Test or at 450 for whatever, the death overs of a T20, or the middle overs of an ODI.

Like Warne, like Wasim, the magic might come in an instant, in one magnificent ball that can swing and serve and dip, or take off from a length, or break back, or suddenly drop in pace; or it might reveal itself over the course of longer spells, which are, by now, appointment viewing in cricket. A wicket at the end of either is mere incidental detail, although typically for a man with such ice-cold control over his skills, even that detail is assiduously taken care of.

Shane Bond on Jasprit Bumrah: Why Bumrah is one of the best players going around in the world is a combination of things. An action that is different and that makes the ball come out differently makes him difficult to pick up as a batter, but he also combines that action with the skill to move the ball both ways and still execute an outstanding slower ball. He is a competitor who loves being in that pressure moment. His work ethic is really strong, not only in the nets, where he's always well-planned to execute his skills, but also off the field, in terms of his preparation and scouting of opposition players. So it is the perfect combination of on- and off-field preparation. Once you combine all of that, you have one of the greatest bowlers in the world.

I distinctly remember a Super Over in 2017 in the IPL, when he was bowling to Brendon McCullum and Aaron Finch. Mumbai Indians were defending eight or nine, and even after starting with a no-ball, Bumrah could adapt to the conditions and successfully defend the score.