Black Caps skipper Kane Williamson and Team New Zealand skipper Peter Burling. Photosport
Black Caps skipper Kane Williamson and Team New Zealand skipper Peter Burling. Photosport
OPINION:
Who is the coolest sporting star of our summer - Kane Williamson or Peter Burling?
Both are extremely cool for the best possible reason - they don't ever try to be anything they're not. No teeth whitening, no Botox, no fake tan, no strutting "I'm a star and you'renot" behaviour, just quiet genius. In the words of an American psychologist, "Cool people don't need to try to impress, they just are".
Let's look at some key issues that define cool in sport.
When Burling wins he celebrates by smiling and allowing that he was "happy with how things went today." Williamson's attitude was brilliantly expressed by a great online image someone posted after he'd scored a double century against Pakistan in Christchurch. On one side was a shot of Williamson, quietly doffing his helmet to acknowledge the crowd. On the other side, the biggest dork in cricket, David Warner, is seen leaping almost his own height off the ground, and slashing the air with his bat after scoring a century.
2) Icy when the heat goes on
Black Caps skipper Kane Williamson and Team New Zealand skipper Peter Burling. Photosport
When Burling, a 27-year-old America's Cup rookie, skippered New Zealand to victory in Bermuda in 2017, his opponent, Jimmy Spithill, tried every verbal off-course trick in the book to rattle him. It didn't work. In the race that sealed the win, Burling sped past a beaten and becalmed Spithill. They locked eyes and, in the most perfect Fred Dagg rural back road gesture ever, Burling waved an index figure that said "g'day and goodbye".
Williamson's double century in Christchurch came after a pretty average start, with the Black Caps 52-2, and Pakistan's bowlers on fire. By the time Williamson and Henry Nicholls had knocked up a 359-run fourth-wicket partnership there wasn't even a tiny spark left in the bowling attack.
3) Good guys when things go bad for opponents
Emirates Team New Zealand members, including Peter Burling, help out to prevent American Magic from sinking. Photo / Michael Craig
An abiding memory from the current America's Cup will be of Burling helping on a Team New Zealand support boat as lines were thrown to the floundering American Magic yacht after it capsized.
4) Hidden depths
Williamson is so gently spoken in public it was hard to not wonder, when he took over as Black Caps captain, if he'd get his points across in team meetings as well as straight-shooting Brendon McCullum did. A cricketing insider says that in fact Williamson is just as decisive as McCullum was, "and I'm told it may be even harder to change his mind than it was with Brendon".
As for Burling, a former America's Cup sailor understands that, like Russell Coutts, Burling, who started, but didn't finish, an engineering degree, has a natural gift for boat design that matches highly qualified experts in the field.
5) Being world class
Kane Williamson celebrates reaching 200 during the second test against Pakistan. Photosport
It's cool in itself that Williamson is an automatic first choice in a World XI, and that Burling and his mate Blair Tuke are not only Olympic gold medal winners, but also, when they're not winning the America's Cup are the only sailors to have won six 49er class world championships.
If you've watched the Tiger Woods documentary, and been horrified by the parental pressures that young Tiger was under, how sweet it is to read again a 2015 Williamson profile by Dylan Cleaver, and learn that as a child it was Kane who decided what he liked.
In his father Brett's words, he was so keen on rugby, for example, that, when Kane started an outstanding school career at first-five, "He came home and said, 'If I'm going to play there, then I'm going to have to be as strong as the flankers who are going to tackle me'. We had an old swing-set out the back and he'd do chin-ups off the bar to make himself stronger."
And when Burling and Tuke get any spare time between match races what do they do? They head to the liquid Himalayas of the Southern Ocean and compete in the 2017-18 Volvo Ocean race.
