Last year was a great one for New Zealand cricket, from the World Cup run to their continued success (outside of Australia) with the red ball. But while fellas like McCullum, Taylor, Guptill, Elliott, Boult and Southee all did fantastic things, none quite measures up to the sustained magnificence of the one we call Prince Kane.

Even the Aussies loved him, Ian Chappell was ready to adopt him if that test series had lasted any longer and usually those muppets with the microphones don’t even notice opposition players unless they’re being unflatteringly compared to some bugger in a Baggy Green. But Prince Kane’s numbers stand up to comparison with anyone. Steve Smith may have won the 2015 ICC Player of the Year award but that’s just a technicality. For some reason the voting period there went from September 18, 2014 to September 13, 2015, making the ‘2015’ part of the name pretty fatuous. First of all, that excludes the Australian and NZ summer which is harsh* and it also begs the question: why announce it at the end of December then if it’s ignoring the previous three months? Eh, whatever.

*2015 Trans-Tasman Trophy Test Series in Australia:

• Kane Williamson: 6 innings, 428 runs @ 85.60 (S/R 66.66) with 2 100s & 1 50
• Steve Smith: 6 innings, 281 runs @ 46.83 (S/R 59.66) with 1 100 & 1 50
• (Also, David Warner: 6 innings, 592 runs @ 98.66 (S/R 85.42) with 3 100s & 0 50s)

Anyway, let’s talk about Kane. There is no finer batsman in the world. That’s a subjective observation but when you watch this guy build an innings, not many will argue. His technique is flawless, he plays the ball so late and so unhurried. The tempo of his innings never flutters. Kane Williamson looks just as comfortable on 1* as he does on 101* and from the balance of his head to his swift foot movements and uninhibited hand-eye coordination, there probably isn’t a more textbook technique in modern cricket. Perhaps not since Sachin Tendulkar. That’s a weighty comparison but both Williamson and Tendulkar share that same illusion of batting in the eye of the storm, keeping their heads while all those around them lose theirs, to borrow a phrase. Out in the middle. That is their happy place.

So simple, so immaculate. These were Williamson’s test scores in the calendar year of 2015:

• vs Sri Lanka in Wellington: 69 and 242*
• vs England at Lord’s: 132 and 27
• vs England in Leeds: 0 and 6
• vs Australia in Brisbane: 140 and 59
• vs Australia in Perth: 166 and 32*
• vs Australia in Adelaide: 22 and 9
• vs Sri Lanka in Dunedin: 88 and 71
• vs Sri Lanka in Hamilton: 1 and 108*

That’s 1172 runs in only 16 innings. An average of 90.15 with 5 centuries and 4 fifties. If only that conversion rate was just a little better then we could have been talking Bradman. All that was keeping him from joining this next list was a few longer innings and New Zealand’s typically scarce test schedule that saw only Bangladesh play fewer matches than the Blackcaps last year.

Most Test 100s in a Calendar Year:

1. 9 – Mohammed Yousuf, Pakistan (2006) (19 inns @ 99.33, 3 50s)
2. 7 – Ricky Ponting, Australia (2006) (18 inns @ 88.86, 4 50s)
3. 7 – Viv Richards, West Indies (1976) (19 inns @ 90.00, 5 50s)
4. 7 – Aravinda de Silva, Sri Lanka (1997) (19 inns @ 76.25, 2 50s)
5. 7 – Sachin Tendulkar, India (2010) (23 inns @ 78.10, 5 50s)

12 times a player has scored six test centuries in a single year (including Steve Smith in 2015). Williamson joins the list of fellows with five of them. Had he played a bit more test cricket then he’d have been on pace to match all of those lads bar Mohammed Yousuf, whose 2006 is arguably the finest 12 months a post-war batsman ever produced, scoring 1788 runs all up in those 19 innings (in matches at home to India, away to Sri Lanka, away to England and home to the West Indies). One of those nine hundies was a 202 at Lords and three were dismissals in the 190s (within the space of six innings! – no other batsman in test history has more than two 190s in their career, in fact New Zealand as a country only has three: McCullum’s 195 vs Sri Lanka off only 134 balls, Stephen Fleming’s 192 vs Pakistan in 2003 (Dan Vettori scored his maiden test 100 in that innings too) and… Kane Williamson, 192 vs Pakistan in Sharjah, November 2014).

Also, Williamson is a test century against Zimbabwe from becoming the sixth player to ton up against every test playing nation. Ricky Ponting did it first, Herschelle Gibbs, Sachin Tendulkar, Hashim Amla and Virat Kohli are the others.

But as far as kiwi willow-wielders go, #Kane2015 was as good as any ever. Up until recently we’d never had a batsman score 1000 runs in a calendar year. Bolstered by a triple century and two doubles, Brendon McCullum managed it in 2014 with 1164 of them (16 inns @ 72.75, 4 100s & 0 50s). Kane went surpassed him with the boundary that brought up his fifth and final test ton of 2015.

143 times a batsman has scored 1000 test runs in a year. Sachin Tendulkar did it six times. Only two have been by New Zealanders. But, hey, there’s always 2016.

Most Test Runs in a Year by a NZer:

Williamson’s 2015 test average is also comfortably the highest by a kiwi in any single year (min. 20 innings). Next up is John Wright’s 1990 (705 runs @ 78.33) and then McCullum’s 2010 (758 @ 75.80).

Prince Kane’s test totals don’t top the year’s international standings, but only because of the fact that he batted at least eight innings fewer than any of the four men ahead of him: Steve Smith (1474 @ 73.70), Joe Root (1385 @ 60.22), Alistair Cook (1364 @ 54.56) and David Warner (1317 @ 54.88). Those four all had the benefit of a five-test Ashes series against each other, as well as series against this current West Indies team and we all know what they’re like at the mo’.

However the insane thing about Kane Williamson last year was that he was arguably even better in ODIs. It was a World Cup year, after all, and who can forget this moment of majesty:

The dude scored 1376 runs in ODIs in 2015. That would’ve been a comfortable international best were it not for his buddy Martin Guptill, who plundered the Windies in the World Cup quarter-final and finished strong against Sri Lanka as Kane sat out a couple games with a minor injury.

Unlike with tests, getting in the One Day reps isn’t a big problem for the B-Cappies. They played 32 times over those 12 months, one game more than Zimbabwe and five more than any other team. 21 of those matches were wins, 10 were losses and 1 was a no-result. Of course, the highlight of that was the run that took the Blackcaps all the way to their first ever World Cup final (we’ll leave it there as to how that one went). Guptill played in every one of them, Williamson missed five. Here was KW’s 2015 in ODIs:

• 15, 103, 26, 97, 54 (SL/H)
• 112 (PAK/H)
• 57, 38, 9*, 45*, 33, 1, 33, 6, 12 (World Cup)
• 45, 93, 118, 90, 50 (ENG/A)
• 97, 90 (ZIM/A)
• 47, 7, 39 (SA/A)
• 59, 12 (SL/H).

Aside from his match-winning 45 not out against Aussie at Eden Park and his 57 in the opener against Sri Lanka, Williamson actually didn’t have a fantastic World Cup. Yet his form on either side of it was just incredible. Once again, if only he’d turned a few more of those big fifties into tonnage. Williamson’s only been dismissed once in the 90s in test cricket (plus once more in the 190s) but he had five of them in ODIs in 2015 alone, plus a 97 in December 2014 against Pakistan. For a little context, Sachin Tendulkar holds the record (as he does for many things) with 18 dismissals in the 90s in his career. He played 463 times. Williamson won’t reach 100 ODIs until later in the year and he is already seventh all time with 6. Nathan Astle leads NZers with 9 90s in his career, while Martin Crowe also had 6 and Stephen Fleming 4. KW could realistically have scored 8 ODI centuries last year and that would have been second only to Sachin’s 1998: 1894 runs @ 65.31 with 9 100s & 7 50s. That’s also the record for runs in a calendar year, a list that Martin Guptill now enters at eighth place. Williamson slots in at fifteenth. As for the local numbers...

Most ODI Runs in a Year by a NZer:

Yup, 2015 was a good year. For Kane Williamson more than most, because the long and short forms of cricket can often require very different sets of skills. You’re batting in all sorts of varying situations and while most great batsmen will make successful careers of both, being able to dominate both tests and one dayers over the course of a full year is an incredible feat. Williamson was fifth in test runs scored and second in ODI runs scored for 2015. Not only was he the lone bloke in both top fives… he was the only man in the TOP FIFTEEN of both forms. When you add in his four T20I innings (57 vs ENG, 20 vs ZIM, 42 vs SA & 25 vs SA), then he scored 2692 international runs across all formats. That is the third most prolific run-scoring year in the history of cricket!

Most Combined International Runs in a Calendar Year (Test/ODI/T20I):

Obviously modern cricket is completely favoured in that stat coz of the number of games and the extra formats that they play these days, but that should take very little away from the astonishing figures. Martin Guptill slides in at #50 on that list thanks to his December runs in 2015 (2105 all up in ‘15). There are 67 instances of a 2000 run combined year, dating back to Brian Lara in 1995. Almost every name on that list is an undisputed legend of the game and that shows you the brilliance it takes to sustain such heights across the board for as long as this. That is the company in which Kane Williamson is making himself at home. That’s the kind of thing we’re talking about with this guy. New Zealand records are one thing and he should shatter plenty of them, but Williamson’s numbers stand alongside any other player on the planet and at 25 years of age he’s only now entering his peak.

All hail Prince Kane.