Former New Zealand captain Kane Williamson revealed that a discussion with Indian batter Virat Kohli on the day before his international retirement announcement helped clarify his decision. Williamson spoke about the conversation on the Between Two Beers Podcast.Williamson ended his 16-year career in June 2025 as New Zealand’s highest international run-scorer, accumulating 19,346 runs, including 48 centuries and six double-centuries. In Test cricket alone, he scored 9,515 runs, with 33 centuries and six double-centuries, retiring less than 500 runs short of the 10,000-run milestone, a significant achievement in Test cricket. Kohli retired from Test cricket in 2025 with 9,230 runs.Williamson explained that he shared many similarities with Kohli, including lengthy careers, leadership roles, and managing family life alongside professional commitments. He said: “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.” He added, “He’s 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 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.”Williamson reflected on how his approach and motivation towards cricket evolved over 16 years, stating that changing personal priorities affected his relationship with the sport. He said, “It’s funny like your approach to the game and how you treat it and how you go about it. If or when that starts to change and that was largely what we were sharing and and the pursuit and this was a lot of the the conversation it’s like ‘man this 16 years on this pursuit and every day is how do I get better, how do I get this team better every day’ and we were talking a lot about that and you do it for a long time your life changes and for the better.”He continued, “Like you do something and you love it for so long, you give it everything and then you do have to put it down, but your life does change and therefore you can find yourself in positions that you’re doing things for reasons that aren’t yours, you know, and I don’t think you can do that for a long time, but I think it’s still important. It was for me to just understand it a little bit. And I was in that space because I didn’t want to make any sort of drastic decisions on it, but I could see and feel that it was changing a bit. And we were just talking about this and it’s funny because you play this sport and there’s potentially a profile that’s attached to it and fans that come and watch and it’s an amazing thing to be a part of, but you don’t play it for that.”Regarding the 10,000 Test runs milestone, Williamson said it was never a personal goal or motivation. He said, “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 and to being a part of the team.”
He added, “Every interview I did, they would ask about it and they were never the things that drove me, you 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 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.”
