Racing
League
Rugby
Football
Cricket
Golf
Sport Nation
Motorsport
Netball
Basketball
Combat Sports
Olympics
Other Sports
Find your Sport Nation frequencyWhy Kane Williamson doesn't consider himself great and how Buddhism gave him purpose
Alex Chapman • November 12th, 2026 9:31 am
Kane Williamson raises his bat for one of his 33 career Test centuries | Photo: Andrew Cornaga/Photosport
The best of batters in cricket speak about a zone.
There's no admission fee, but it's an area only the elite enter. Few knew it better than Kane Williamson.
You often hear of the "Williamson bubble" - it was a state he would enter where the noise around was silenced and the bat would become a pillow which he'd twirl in his hands before playing the trademark drops under his eyes.
Sometimes he would be so locked in, he'd be suitably blowing bubbles with chewing gum as the bowler was running in.
To most, it’s the mark of greatness.
To Williamson, it’s a concept that doesn’t sit comfortably with him.
He doesn’t “believe it to be so”, nor does he know what he did to be considered by many to be great.
Kane Williamson signing autographs for fans at Saxton Oval | Photo: Evan Barnes/Photosport
“I don't think about that to be honest,” he revealed to Sport Nation, before pausing further to contemplate.
“What are the options, A, B or C? To be honest, I love the game and I still do in playing team sports and wanting to get better in this quite inquisitive mind I guess, where you're just pretty committed to what it is you're doing."
It was that commitment though which at one stage became, as Williamson describes it a stress.
In his book The Bare Margins which was publicly released this week, he shares how the pursuit of getting better became an unhealthy obsession early in his international career.
"It was more what I was trying to get out, what I thought I was going to get of it, like this idea that you would train to maybe, the perfection thing.
"And the stress and that that was very rarely the same thing. And so you're spending all this time and energy and exhausted by it. And I was still a big trainer afterwards but I just wasn't seeking the same things out of it."
A tribute to retiring Blackcaps legend Kane Williamson | Scotty & Izzy
That led him down the path of Eastern philosophies and approaches to life, particularly through Buddhism.
"I think it's probably more the noise, the attachment to things that you think will give you what you want, whatever it is.
"And so therefore we kind of live in that space of always just needing to have it, needing to be more, to get the hundred, to force it. That'll then give me all the things that promise of salvation and hundreds. And it doesn't.
"I think it's a good thing to know because then it's also not the only thing and there's more out there and there's value in less sometimes. And ultimately, I think the ego is the thing that just keeps taking you away from being content in the moment."
Being content was a factor in his decision to retire when he did, after the first Test against England at Lord's.
Kane Williamson (2nd left) celebrates with his Blackcaps teammates after taking a great catch to dismiss Ben Stokes in his final Test at Lord's | Photo: Matthew Impey/Photosport
Williamson understands why fans may be frustrated with it - after all, his 9515 Test runs is comfortably New Zealand's best. And in a T20 mad and heavy world, it's hard to see anyone else come close to him and the mark of 10-thousand runs.
Those numbers though are arbitrary to him, as was emphasised by a conversation with his wife, Sarah, who reminded him it had never been a motivation.
"It didn't drive my performance. So to then think that it would, and I would use the team to just try and achieve something sort of selfishly and then what, you'd tick over on day two of a Test and then you went, 'yep, I'm done' and you'd kick your pads off and walk off.
"It was never about that. Having said that, there's nothing against it. It's an amazing achievement, but I believe it just needs to be done through a different way.
"It just couldn't be the thing for me. It needed to be other things that tied me to the game, to the team, and to where it was wanting to go and made my decision."
Watch the full interview via the Sport Nation YouTube below:
Tune into Sport Nation for live ball-by-ball commentary of the Blackcaps' Test tour of Australia this December/January - download the app today on Google Play and the App Store - find your frequency here.
