Cricket has a new Fab Four – and none of them are Aussies

It’s 10 years since New Zealand great Martin Crowe picked out Kane Williamson, Virat Kohli, Joe Root and Steve Smith as the four outstanding young batters who could dominate Test cricket for years to come.

Crowe died two years later from lymphoma so never saw the “Fab Four”, as he termed them, reach the apex of their careers. But his sharp observation about the quartet who have lived up to his prediction has led to much frenzied debate over the past decade.

Each of them has had periods where they have been the dominant batter in the world game, with Root now leading the way during a four-year period where has hit 19 Test centuries compared to Williamson’s 10, Smith’s six and Kohli’s three.

Yet Root, speaking in the aftermath of England’s series-clinching win in Wellington last weekend, signalled a changing of the guard when he singled out team-mate Harry Brook as “the best player in the world right now”.

He has a point given Brook has just overtaken him at the top of the world Test batting rankings and his record at the same stage of his career is comfortably better than Root’s.

However, Brook, who has hit back-to-back centuries on this tour of New Zealand, is not alone. Alongside India’s Yashasvi Jaiswal, New Zealand’s Rachin Ravindra and Kamindu Mendis of Sri Lanka, Brook is leading the way for an emerging new wave of batters who have been dubbed the “Gen Z Fab Four”.

This group of players all made their Test debuts in the past three years and are from the first generation young enough to not remember a time before T20 cricket’s emergence in 2003.

That is reflected in their approach to the game, with Brook and Jaiswal in particular the most extreme when it comes to their attacking verve and invention.

Brook’s innings in Wellington last week, when he struck 123 on a seaming pitch against a New Zealand attack with its collective tail up after reducing England to 43 for four on day one, was a perfect case in point.

Jaiswal, who at 22 is the youngest of this quartet, has been equally effective, with perhaps the standout innings of his career so far the unbeaten 214 from 236 balls against England at Rajkot back in February. It was a knock that turned the Test ­– and the series – in India’s favour and was the perfect example of Jaiswal’s ability to marry the old-fashioned virtues of a solid defence and classical attacking strokes with jaw-dropping power and array of unorthodox shots that allow him to score all around the ground.

Jaiswal had already scored a double hundred against England in the previous Test in Visakhapatnam having made a stunning introduction to the international stage when he made 171 on his Test debut against the West Indies in Dominica in July 2023. It was the highest score by an Indian on debut.

Jaiswal’s best so far, though, was his second-innings 161 against Australia at Perth last month, a masterclass in dogged application across more than seven hours that was peppered with touches of attacking brilliance. No more so than when he brought up his century by audaciously uppercutting Josh Hazlewood for six. After 16 Tests, his record is better than both Kohli and the great Sachin Tendulkar.

English audiences were introduced to Mendis when he scored a stylish century in a losing cause at Old Trafford in August. That was his third century in his first four Tests and he went on to score back-to-back hundreds the following month at home to New Zealand, including an unbeaten 182 in the second Test at Galle that set up an innings win for his team. After 10 Tests he is averaging 74. He reached his first 1,000 Test runs in as many innings – 13 ­– as Australian great Don Bradman.

Meanwhile Ravindra, who scored a majestic unbeaten 123 against England in the World Cup opener at Ahmedabad in October of last year, has the fewest Test centuries of this group – two. But he showed his talent with a career and match-defining 134 in the first Test against India at Bangalore last month. In all, he averaged 51.20 as New Zealand shocked the world with a 3-0 series win. Ravindra hasn’t done anything of note in this current series against England that concludes in Hamilton in the next week – his top score so far is 34. But he is one of a number of Black Caps who look to be suffering a hangover from that momentous tour of India.

Brook, though, stands apart from the rest in terms of record and style. He is the only right-hander in this quartet but that takes nothing away aesthetically from his batting. It is tempting to wonder whether he might have made a difference had he been in India earlier this year, a tour he missed when his grandmother became ill. It is likely it would have been closer than the eventual 4-1 scoreline given Brook’s output this winter, with his two centuries here in New Zealand following the 317 against Pakistan in Multan in October. That was the second-fastest triple-century in history and England’s first since 1990.

Of all four players, Brook’s strike-rate of 88.57 is comfortably the highest, with Jaiswal’s 67.94 the next closest. All, though, bat with no fear and absolute clarity and are accelerating the evolution of Test batting at pace.

After Wellington, Brook tried to articulate how this new generation are approaching the game, saying: “I think sometimes you’ve just got to go out of your comfort zone and have the courage to run down the track or whatever. I think a lot of people are practising a lot of different things and practising certain shots.

“And you look at the field and think there’s a massive gap there, so let’s just try hit it there. I think when you look at gaps as well, you almost commit to a shot before the ball’s almost bowled. It probably works more in white-ball, but you kind of know you’re going to target a space, and whether you play one shot or the other, you’re committed to hitting in that area.”

It certainly makes for entertaining cricket and to see how these four push the boundaries of what is possible over the next decade or so will be fascinating to watch.

There is no guarantee any of them will play Test cricket for that long, with all four being bought up in last month’s Indian Premier League auction for a combined fee in excess of £2.5m. The franchise world may be threatening the fabric of Test cricket but if this quartet can stay committed to it for as long as possible the game’s oldest format should have a brighter future than many think.