Joe Root would do well to take a leaf out of Kane Williamson's book as England prepare for New Zealand test

If the recent fresh dumps of snow have made this feel like a never-ending winter, then spare a thought for England’s cricketers as they prepare to dust off their whites and resume Test action, almost three months after the conclusion of the Ashes in Sydney.

Joe Root has been on the road, bar a brief return home, almost constantly since flying Down Under from Heathrow on 28 October.

And if he didn’t realise how tough the England captaincy was going to be before he took the job, he certainly does now.

When Root leads his England team out at Eden Park in Auckland on the early hours of Thursday morning, he’ll do so in the knowledge that a first away defeat to the Kiwis since 1984 would pile on the pressure so soon after an Ashes hiding.

The man hoping to ensure that England’s dismal Test run on the road continues is Kane Williamson – the New Zealand captain and a batsman already being dubbed perhaps the greatest in New Zealand’s history.

That may be premature given that he’s still only 27 but such has been his influence on his country’s fortunes since he made his Test bow against India in 2010 that he’s already viewed by many as at least the equal of Glenn Turner and Martin Crowe.

Root and Williamson currently occupy numbers three and four in the ICC batting rankings, behind only Virat Kohli and Steve Smith.

Little wonder that the fortunes of both will go a long way to deciding whether England return home with a bang or a whimper.

Williamson was appointed Kiwi skipper in April 2016, taking over from the departing Brendon McCullum.

Since assuming the top job he has led from the front in every sense, scoring 1177 runs at an average of over 58. Root has fared remarkably similarly, notching 1107 at 55.

It is Root’s conversion rate of fifties to hundreds that has come under most scrutiny over the past 12 months, though. Since taking over from Alastair Cook, Root has passed fifty 12 times but only twice has he gone on to turn two figures into three.

It’s now seven Tests since he scored 136 against the West Indies at Edgbaston back in mid-August and his frustration at failing to hit a century in the Ashes was clear to see, particularly when he threw his wicket away with one apparently within his grasp in the first innings of the final Test at Sydney.

Compare that with Williamson, whose last series in Australia in 2015 saw him score 428 runs at an average of 85, including two memorable hundreds in Brisbane and Perth, both traditional graveyards for England batsmen.

At present, Root scores a century once in every five Test. Williamson’s ratio is a much lower 3.7.

That, of course, will count for nothing over the next two Tests but what’s certain is that England are coming up against at batsman at the very peak of his powers.

James Pamment, like Root, is a proud Yorkshireman. The only difference being that since his teenage years he has lived and worked in New Zealand. He left his job at Northern Districts last week to travel to the Indian Premier League (IPL) for a stint as the franchise’s fielding coach.

He is, though, a man who knows Williamson’s game as well as anyone, having first come across him as a teenager in Tauranga in the North Island’s Bay of Plenty.

“He was a 14-year-old when I first started working with him and you could tell then that he was going to be an exceptional player,” says Pamment.

“He has always had a deep passion for the game, even as a kid, that’s one of the first things that struck me.

“He has always been very attentive to his learning as well. He always seemed to have an old, experienced head on very young shoulders.

“He has always been the consummate team man as well. Yes, he wanted to score runs himself, of course, he did, but the team always came before anything else.

“And I don’t think that has changed. You get a lot of talented young players who tend to focus only on themselves but that wasn’t the case with Kane. It was all about what he needed to do to help the team that he was playing in.”

Williamson has shown that maturity wherever he has played, from his very early days in Gloucestershire’s Second XI to later spells in county cricket with Yorkshire.

He’ll return to Headingley this summer, hoping to emulate his achievements in 2014, when he scored 629 runs at an average of 57 for Jason Gillespie’s title-winning side.

There’s every chance he may share a dressing room with Root for a brief period, international commitments allowing for the England captain.

Before that, though, the pair will lock horns for a series that has assumed greater importance since England’s Ashes humbling at the turn of the year.

The runs scored by both captains could go a long way to deciding whether Root’s winter ends on a high or a low. Their respective tallies could also decide who buys the first round of drinks at the Headingley bar.