Cricket-Williamson underlines class with defiant Gabba innings

BRISBANE, Nov 7 (Reuters) - New Zealand endured another miserable day at the Gabba on Saturday but Kane Williamson provided at least one brilliant ray of sunshine to penetrate the Brisbane gloom for the Black Caps. Underlining his status as one of the best young batsmen in the game, the 25-year-old kept his cool in the most trying of circumstances to score his 11th test hundred and frustrate Australia's vaunted pace attack with a defiant innings of 140. That Australia's openers then ran rampant to fire the hosts to an unassailable lead of 503 by the end of the third day of the first test should not detract from what was a superb innings from Williamson. He was, of course, by no means an unknown quantity coming into the three-test series against Australia. He is one of six players to have scored 10 test centuries before the age of 25 and the names of the other five -- Donald Bradman, Garfield Sobers, Sachin Tendulkar, Graeme Smith and Neil Harvey -- indicate that it is an extremely select group. New Zealand greats Richard Hadlee and Martin Crowe, Yorkshire coach Jason Gillespie and Black Caps batting coach Craig McMillan are among those who have predicted Williamson will become the best batsman his country has ever produced. His 140 at the Gabba took him to 3,339 career runs in 42 tests with, injury notwithstanding, a good few years left yet to overhaul New Zealand's most prolific test batsman Stephen Fleming, who scored 7,172 in 111. Williamson's last visit to Australia as a 21-year-old in 2011 was not a great success -- his top score was a 34 -- but Saturday's century gave him a hundred against eight of the test-playing nations. It was the calmness of his Gabba innings that impressed as much as the undoubtedly fine footwork, the powerful drives and the 24 fours, though. There were no histrionics when he reached the magic milestone for the 11th time in test cricket, merely a doff of the helmet and a handshake from his batting partner. Given the circumstances, his job was to eke out New Zealand's innings for as long as possible and he stuck to his task manfully, depriving himself of runs to farm out the strike and building a succession of partnerships with tailenders. It was only when he looked like running out of partners that he finally succumbed to the second new ball, an inswinger from Mitchell Starc catching an inside edge which Peter Nevill claimed behind the stumps. (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney in Sydney; Editing by John O'Brien)