India, June 12 -- Just like that, the Fab Four of Test batting has been chopped in half, with the retirement on Friday of Kane Williamson, the affable former New Zealand captain who has called time on his glorious career midway through the ongoing tour of England.

Some 13 months after Virat Kohli, his counterpart at the Under-19 World Cup in Kuala Lumpur in 2008, dramatically bid adieu to the five-day game, the soft-spoken Williamson followed suit, leaving Australia's Steve Smith and Englishman Joe Root as the sole survivors of inarguably the most influential Test batters of their generation.

There was a touch of inevitability to Williamson's retirement from the time he opted to forgo a central contract with New Zealand Cricket last Sep...