Thala_0710
International Captain
Winning games for your country is obviously very important. Mohammad Nabi, Dipendra Airee etc have many many games for their nations, probably more than Smith has for Australia. Are they ATGs? No. Are they extremely important to their team? Yes.You wanna know THE actual criteria for determining greatness? Winning games for your country. Joe Root's gleaming SENAI away-record hasn't done a thing to prevent England from losing 5 separate test series in Bangladesh, UAE, Pakistan and the West Indies over the past decade. KW's stats padding has had a massive influence on NZ's success at the same venues during the same period.
Also, dismissing consistently outstanding performances vs very strong SA and English bowling attacks because 'Oh home runs don't count'? FFS, mate, New Zealand bowling conditions are tailor made for guys like Steyn, Anderson, Rabada, Broad, Morkel etc etc.
Opposition matters, conditions matter, ofc they do. Pretending they don't is far from reality. Afg, Nep have faced much weaker teams relative to what Kw has faced. But as you said, it's very important to them too to beat the Zimbabwe, Uae etc of this world.
I'm not saying runs against pak, wi etc don't matter. They do, but they matter less, as compared to the best teams. Williamson is a very good bat, great at home. But that's not enough for ATG status imo. ATG status isn't just decided by how important you are to the team, it's decided more on quality. Performing away against the very best has always been the metric no 1 to judge that. Williamson just hasn't done enough imo.
Maybe I have too high a bar for ATGs. I don't consider Abd, Kohli, Younis ATGs either whom I consider better than KW. That's just it.