Fab 4 Cricket: Complete Guide to Kohli, Smith, Root & Williamson

In cricket, the Fab Four refers to Virat Kohli, Steve Smith, Joe Root, and Kane Williamson — the leading Test batting quartet of the modern era.

Virat Kohli
Steve Smith
Joe Root
Kane Williamson

The phrase Fab Four is part shorthand, part cultural marker. It captures a period when these four right-handers — from India, Australia, England, and New Zealand — pulled Test batting into a new shape. They defined standards for run-scoring, adaptability, resilience, and the art of converting starts into match-shaping hundreds. They were never a formal club, just a consensus of excellence, built ledger by ledger across continents.

Fab Four meaning in cricket: definition, origin, why it matters

Fab Four in cricket (or Fab 4 cricket) means the group of four modern greats — Kohli, Smith, Root, Williamson — whose sustained peaks reshaped expectations for Test batting while also leaving strong white-ball footprints. The term surfaced in commentary rooms, long-form features, and fan discourse as their careers overlapped and surged. There is no single coinage; broadcasters, ESPNcricinfo, Wisden, Cricbuzz, and other publishers used the label as a convenient way to compare and celebrate a shared era.

Why does the Fab Four matter?

It’s a comparative lens. The Fab Four makes it natural to ask who is the best among Kohli, Smith, Root, and Williamson, which in turn drives deeper situational analysis — away form, 4th-innings temperament, captaincy impact, and performance against elite bowling.
It’s a Test-first concept. The phrase lives in red-ball cricket, where technique, temperament, and adaptability in extreme conditions are tested. Yet, each member’s white-ball craft adds context that often sways public opinion.
It’s a time stamp on a batting standard. Across the past decade and more, this group created benchmarks and kept resetting them — richer run tallies, higher conversion rates, more away hundreds, more control in crisis.

At a glance: Fab Four batsmen comparison

A single table won’t capture the whole story, but an at-a-glance matrix helps frame a long debate. Rather than impose absolute numbers that drift with every series, the table ranks relative edges within the quartet. It brings out the “who leads where” without pretending to settle everything.

Metric-by-metric edge (within the Fab Four)

Test runs (career volume): 1) Root 2) Smith 3) Kohli 4) Williamson
Test batting average (career): 1) Smith 2) Williamson 3) Kohli 4) Root
Away reliability (overall): 1) Smith 2) Williamson 3) Kohli 4) Root
SENA resilience (SA, England, NZ, Australia): 1) Smith 2) Williamson 3) Kohli 4) Root
Asia mastery (for non-Asian batters): 1) Root 2) Smith 3) Williamson 4) — Kohli is Asian, excels at home/Asia, but this row compares non-Asian technique in Asia
Big hundreds tendency (daddy hundreds, 150+): 1) Smith 2) Root 3) Williamson 4) Kohli
Fourth-innings serenity (Tests): 1) Williamson 2) Root 3) Smith 4) Kohli
ODI pedigree (aggregate + chasing impact): 1) Kohli 2) Root 3) Williamson 4) Smith
T20I pedigree (impact matches, volume): 1) Kohli 2) Williamson 3) Root 4) Smith
ICC events temperament (white-ball): 1) Kohli 2) Williamson 3) Smith 4) Root
Captaincy vs batting balance: 1) Williamson 2) Kohli 3) Root 4) Smith (as a captain; as a batter Smith remains elite)

Notes

Root leads Test runs by volume within the group.
Smith carries the top Test average, built on outrageous consistency and conversion of starts into big hundreds.
Kohli’s white-ball body of work, especially while chasing, sets him apart globally.
Williamson is the metronome — a class act in all formats, quietly immense in pressure phases.
The ordering above focuses on relative edges; actual numbers evolve series by series.

The Fab Four in Test cricket

Test cricket is where the Fab Four idea was born and where it still belongs. True greatness in Tests is not about a single superpower; it’s the ability to carry different superpowers across conditions and cycles. Below are the distinguishing signatures.

Technical and tactical profiles

Virat Kohli — rhythm, range, and the hard hands challenge

Scoring identity: Strong bottom-hand whip through midwicket, commanding cover drives, fast between wickets. Thrives on tempo; likes to set fields on fire.
Against pace: Prefers combat; when in control, rides bounce beautifully. Periodic flirtation with the fourth-stump channel outside off has defined whole tours — when he lets balls go, he’s unbreakable; when he chases, trouble brews.
Against spin: Advanced stride, decisive feet. Loves to hit the ball under his eyes. Exceptional at rotating singles; can go aerial down the ground to break shackles.
Match-shaping strength: Dominant when he gets in. Bowls captains into defensive fields with quality strike rotation. White-ball muscle memory helps manage tempo in Tests without recklessness.

Steve Smith — eccentric setup, orthodox results

Scoring identity: Constant movement in stance and guard, but supreme stillness at impact. A supreme maker of big hundreds. Disrupts lengths relentlessly.
Against pace: Perhaps the best of the lot. Lines bowlers up, denies them a consistent plan. Pulls from off stump, late-cuts at will, and taps singles even to good-length balls.
Against spin: Suffocates length by using the crease. Plays the slog sweep and the paddled nudge to move fields. Rarely stuck.
Match-shaping strength: Castle-builder. Turns good days into monstrous ones. Drift from bowlers becomes 20 to 30 extra runs; that breaks spells and hearts.

Joe Root — the problem-solver

Scoring identity: High-tempo accumulation, late dabs behind square, wristy square drives, and clever sweep repertory. In recent seasons he has weaponized the reverse scoop against pace, which crashes pre-set fields.
Against pace: Quick on length, superb at using soft hands and patience in English-type conditions. Against high pace on harder decks, uses late play to ride bounce.
Against spin: The most complete of the four in Asia as a visiting batter. Manages strike to keep bowlers off their preferred ends, sweeps in all directions, constantly manipulates fields.
Match-shaping strength: Elastic method. When teams go soft, he goes fast; when pressure spikes, he tightens up and defends deep into the seam.

Kane Williamson — classical minimalism, maximal returns

Scoring identity: Compact, perfectly balanced, minimal backlift at times, velvet touch. He is the ice in tense situations. Late play square of the wicket is a signature.
Against pace: Plays the ball very late. In seam-friendly conditions, that timing produces soft hands, inside edges surviving, nicks dying. Drives less, waits longer, wins patience contests.
Against spin: Rotates with underplayed wrists. Floats singles into gaps, rarely exposes stumps early. Selects risk moments with great discipline.
Match-shaping strength: Poise. When the game gets louder, he gets quieter. Fourth-innings temperament and chase control mark him out.

Converting starts: 50-to-100 and the art of the big hundred

Smith is the benchmark. Once he crosses fifty, the opposition’s problem doubles, then doubles again at seventy. His ability to “restart” inside an innings — changing gears after breaks and wickets — is peerless.
Root’s conversion improved as he retooled his game to be more assertive once set. Big hundreds arrived more consistently; his tempo now prevents bowlers from dictating time.
Williamson doesn’t chase daddy hundreds for theater; he builds them as a byproduct of process, leaving fewer scoring strokes on offer but playing them more often.
Kohli’s conversion surges in streaks. When he finds his leave and first-innings control, the hundreds come in clusters, often front-running attacks into submission.

Home vs away: what travels and what doesn’t

Away runs separate fan favorites from enduring greats. This quartet, taken as a group, has rewritten away expectations. The key is not just averages; it’s how they manufacture runs when their A-game doesn’t show up.

Smith travels with a portable set of solutions. His movement disorients bowlers. In England, he has been a story unto himself; in South Africa, where the ball bites, he has still found methods to score.
Williamson’s away method is a study in time management. He lets spells win battles but not the war. When conditions sting, he shrinks the scoring palette without shrinking scoring options.
Kohli’s best away stretches have come when he’s shouldered risk judiciously outside off. In Australia, his expression of front-foot dominance has produced defining hundreds. In England, his best tours were built on restraint and leaving well.
Root’s away aptitude has two faces. Against the moving ball, he is excellent. Against relentless pace on hard decks, he has had to design new options; that’s where the reverse scoop and high-tempo rotation became serious tools.

SENA vs Asia: the acid tests

SENA — South Africa, England, New Zealand, Australia — is the shorthand for seam-bounce skill checks; Asia stresses spin management and the ability to resist low-bounce traps.

Relative SENA and Asia edges

SENA aggregate edge: Smith first; Williamson and Kohli stacked closely; Root next.
Asia for non-Asian visitors: Root first; Smith and Williamson behind in various orders based on venue; Root’s sweeping game is the tiebreaker.
Asia for Kohli: elite at home and across Asia thanks to balance, bat speed, and decision-making in traffic.

Fourth innings and chases in Tests

Fourth-innings batting compresses skill into nerve. The ball is older. The pitch is either slower or misbehaving. The scoreboard margin shrinks and inflates at once.

Williamson owns this space by temperament. Many of his defining Test knocks arrive late in the game — calm chases, calm rearguards. He scores runs in fourth-innings at a rate that outpaces most top-order contemporaries.
Root’s fourth-innings ledger is underrated. He can chase with busy tempo without burning probabilities — an uncommon blend in red-ball cricket.
Smith’s fourth-innings record is solid, but his skylines are in first and second innings, where endurance yields those 150-plus bulwarks.
Kohli brings champion energy to fourth-innings fights; results swing with the outside-off decision tree more than any other factor. When restraint holds, the aura does the rest.

White-ball context: Fab Four in ODI and T20I cricket

The Fab Four is primarily a Test idea. Still, ODI and T20I contexts matter because they shape public memory — chases, knockouts, and late-overs bravado anchor reputations.

Fab Four in ODI cricket

Virat Kohli: the definitive ODI prototype of the era — target tracking, tempo management, and a centuries engine that looks inevitable when he gets past twenty. His one-day batting fuses shot selection with field-mapping; fifty becomes hundred via singles that look banal but break bowlers. In knockouts, he often front-loads stability, letting hitters finish.
Joe Root: ODI batting’s quiet craftsman. Averages, strike-rates, and control all converge into a batting profile designed for the middle overs. He rarely burns dot-ball stacks and rarely lets spinners camp in a corridor.
Kane Williamson: aggregates less than Kohli and Root, but brings match awareness and composure that lifts New Zealand in key moments. Finds singles in dead overs, picks boundary options late, and sequences risk sensibly.
Steve Smith: strong tournament spikes and series-defining spells. Less of a sustained one-day volume merchant compared with the other three, but when in rhythm he can bat through a chase with minimal fuss.

Fab Four in T20I cricket

Kohli’s T20I influence is outsized. He reads chases like no one else — the scoreboard, the matchup, the bowler’s margin for error. From powerplays to the back ten, he sequences risk better than nearly anyone, with a special knack for hitting high-value shots without telegraphing intent.
Williamson is the T20I game manager. Makes teams play his rhythm; plays sweeps, ramps, and nurdles with surgical clarity; finishes innings by finding the fence without losing base probabilities.
Root, when used, is a high-IQ T20I anchor. He links ends, travels well between pace and spin, and deploys scoops and sweeps only as needed.
Smith in T20Is is situational. At his best he collects a run-a-ball against good bowling and kicks on when matchups arrive; his ceiling in T20I is more role-dependent.

ICC events and knockouts

In global events, sample sizes shrink but memories swell. Across Champions Trophy and World Cups, Kohli’s consistency through group and knockout stages has often been the platform for India’s deep runs. Williamson has captained and batted New Zealand into finals and deep runs, often being named among the tournament’s best performers. Smith’s knockout record includes major semifinals and finals contributions that feel surgical more than flashy. Root, for England, has been more of a calming presence than a headliner on the biggest white-ball nights, though his early-tournament work is often spotless.

Captaincy vs non-captaincy: leadership and batting

Captaincy warps time. It steals mental bandwidth, shifts practice windows, and inserts a hundred new obligations. How did it touch the Fab Four?

Kohli: captaincy sharpened his home dominance in Tests and kept his ODI tempo intact. The leadership fire aligned with his batting intent; in tough away spells, the captain’s burden at times overlapped with outside-off temptations, yet his peaks under the armband were towering.
Root: the workload of England captaincy coincided with mega-volume years in Tests. His run tally as captain soared, and he rebuilt his method mid-career to counter spin with sweeps and to punch pace with new options. If anything, the role clarified his batting identity.
Williamson: equilibrium personified. His numbers barely flinch whether he’s captain or not. He spreads game sense across roles without draining the batting core.
Smith: as a batter, he is an ecosystem unto himself — leadership status doesn’t materially change his scoring method. When in the job, he remained the castle-builder.

Quality of opposition: the top-ranked attacks test

Any conversation about the best among the Fab Four ought to cut the data by attack strength — away series against teams ranked at the top, against pace quartets with fresh legs, against spinners in Asia who can run games.

Against elite pace in SENA: Smith’s defensive contact point and back-foot scoring maintain tempo even when the ball talks. He can turn a good-length ball into a single more consistently than anyone else here. Kohli’s top SENA returns are marked by spells where he ignored the wobble and left ruthlessly. Root’s best days in England and New Zealand against the moving ball stand up to any scrutiny. Williamson’s SENA work shines in trenches — not always flashy, usually match-significant.
Against elite spin in Asia: Root’s sweeping ecosystem is a complete plan, not just a shot. He sweeps off length, sweeps against the turn, and rarely lets spinners bowl six balls at the same batter on the same plan. Smith denies length with depth in the crease and hits with sharp angles. Kohli and Williamson both rely on economy of movement and risk managed through soft hands.

Style matchups that decide series

Kohli vs fourth-stump: Whenever he lets that ball go like clockwork, his series becomes a batting masterclass. Whenever he reaches for it early, bowlers smell a window.
Smith vs predictable length: If you keep missing an inch, he builds an innings by harvesting half-chances into singles. That’s the slow strangulation that saps bowling units.
Root vs orthodox spin: If your offspinner and legspinner aren’t willing to bowl wide of off or to go slower-than-slow, Root will sweep you into dull areas and score riskless runs.
Williamson vs ball that shapes away late: He has a way of showing the bat late enough that snares die. He accepts fewer drives early, then eases into them when the ball gets older.

Form tracker: arcs, adjustments, and the feel of the bat

Form in long careers is non-linear. Mechanical tweaks, mental resets, and role shifts create new mini-epochs within a career.

Kohli: tapers between grind and flare. His most decisive adjustments are mental: choosing the leave, delaying the big drive, backing singles when bowlers stretch good lengths. When he gets his stride and stillness right, there’s no edge; just an imperious, humming engine.
Smith: even his lean patches are statistical illusions caused by his own giant baseline. When the shuffle syncs with ball release, he’s unbowlable. When it isn’t, he still finds 40s that feel inevitable. Small shape changes — hands closer to the body, head stillness — flick him back into prime.
Root: added new strokes not for social media reels, but to rearrange fields. The reverse scoop against pace has become a match-control toggle; once it appears, seamers shuffle square, and he resumes classic play.
Williamson: he rarely requires visible changes. The innings slows down around him; he doesn’t slow it. A subtle trigger, a marginally later contact point, and the returns reappear.

Fab Four in SENA and Asia: distilled comparisons

Country and condition-specific performance is the spine of Fab Four debates. Here’s the distilled read without drowning in numbers.

England: Smith has staged some of the most commanding visiting series by a batter of any era. Root at home is a metronome; Kohli’s best tour was built on decisive leaves and attritional big runs; Williamson has quietly banked in tricky spells, leaving a series with match-defining fifties.
Australia: Smith’s citadel. Kohli’s Adelaide masterclasses remain global highlights for an away batter. Root’s best work here has often been fluency without the mega-hundreds. Williamson’s visits are fewer but instructive — soft hands, patience, and precision.
South Africa: tough ground for all, but particularly revealing about technique. Smith’s ability to score when lengths nip has yielded gritty towers. Kohli’s fight in these conditions is a statement of character; Root’s and Williamson’s best knocks here are lessons in diligence.
New Zealand: Williamson at home is serenity. Smith adapts to lateral movement swiftly. Root shines when conditions flatten; Kohli’s tempo disrupts plans if the ball stops biting.
India/Asia: Kohli and Williamson in slow-bounce conditions are surgeons. Root as a visitor in Asia is near the gold standard thanks to his sweeping ecosystem. Smith’s crease play and hands create openings against even top-tier spin.

Clutch: fourth-innings Tests, knockouts in white-ball, and WTC finals

Clutch is an overused word, but there are certain innings that become grammar for a player.

Kohli: epic chase knots in T20Is, tournament-defining ODI anchors, and a portfolio of first-innings Test hundreds that set wins. His calm in two-paced white-ball chases is unmatched, particularly in matches where one over can break you.
Smith: championship-stage poise for Australia. His runs on big Test days often feel inevitable. You look up and he’s 70 while everyone else is searching for singles.
Root: in Tests, he is the tone-setter for England’s middle. Fourth-innings pushes, day-three accelerations, partnership weaving — he stacks small edges into match momentum.
Williamson: quiet monster. Fourth-innings presence, cool in knockout innings, and a mind trained on percentages without ever draining the moment of audacity.

Is the Fab Four only for Test cricket?

In spirit, yes. It refers to Test greatness, with white-ball context as supporting evidence. When fans talk Fab Four in ODI/T20I, the premise shifts, but the conversation still draws energy from red-ball reputations.

Fab Five: adding Babar Azam to the debate

The public debate often expands Fab Four to Fab Five by adding Babar Azam. The argument is straightforward: Babar’s ODI and T20I mastery sits in the same class as Kohli’s and Williamson’s white-ball craft, while his Test batting has steadily grown in depth and consistency. He has captaincy experience, has scored heavily in home conditions with reverse swing and square turn in play, and has delivered overseas spells suggesting a rising red-ball ceiling.

How does Babar change the comparison space?

White-ball: immediately. Babar’s ODI engine and T20I consistency place him alongside Kohli and Williamson, and ahead of most modern batters for stability across phases.
Tests: the sample set is smaller relative to the Fab Four’s long body of work. But the method — minimal hands, clean balance, early judgment outside off, and economy of movement — travels. As his away log deepens, the Fab Five label gains weight.

Successors to the Fab Four: the next wave

Sport mutates. New players arrive with hybrid methods built for all formats, aggressive red-ball tempos, and bigger shot libraries. A few names keep recurring in dressing-room chatter and analyst notebooks.

Shubman Gill: high-elbow orthodoxy blended with modern tempo; opens in white-ball and adapts to number three or four in Tests. His ability to loft spinners with minimal risk and to play late outside off has the makings of an all-format giant.
Harry Brook: red-ball strike rotation fused with power. He sees “run-a-ball in Tests” not as provocation but as method, picking matchups and daring length to hold.
Travis Head: a batter who knocks attacks out of rhythm in the first session. His counterpunching in big games has shifted how teams think about first-innings tempo in finals and deciders.
Yashasvi Jaiswal: left-hand elegance with a ferocious willingness to attack spin early. His conversion record in the formative stage of his career hints at a big-hundred machine.
Marnus Labuschagne: built for long hauls. Obsessive preparation, clear scoring areas, and appetite for building scores in Tests; if he glues a couple more away tours, the conversation expands.

Fab Four in Test cricket: who is the best?

A ranking depends on the lens. If you prioritize Test batting average and big-hundred conversion, Steve Smith sits on top. If you prioritize total Test runs and adaptability across surfaces, Joe Root has the case for volume king. If you weigh all-format greatness, ODI chasing legacy, and captaincy aura, Virat Kohli shapes the coolest narrative. If you value fourth-innings serenity, minimalism under pressure, and across-format efficiency, Kane Williamson looks inevitable.

The point of Fab Four isn’t to compress them into one number. It’s to keep looking closer.

Fab Four in ODI cricket: the distilled read

Kohli: the most complete ODI batter of his time — from new-ball control to endgame clarity.
Root: the middle-overs master; your innings never runs out of oxygen.
Williamson: calm in chaos; he makes even slow surfaces feel scoreable.
Smith: shape-shifter; builds chases and can be tournament-tough when role is clear.

Fab Four in T20I cricket: modern red-ballers in a power format

Red-ball greatness can translate to T20Is when hitters manage risk. Kohli does. Williamson also does, at a lower tempo but perfect clarity. Root offers subtlety over raw power. Smith’s best T20I batting has arrived as a role player rather than centerpiece.

Fab Four captaincy record comparison: batting impact, not trophies

Trophies depend on squads, bowling depth, and tosses. Batting impact under captaincy hinges on how players protect their core method under load.

Williamson: stable, near-linear numbers across roles; clutch innings amplified by captaincy calm.
Kohli: spiky peaks as captain; big hundreds at home, symbolic away statements; ODI dominance consistent.
Root: heavy volume, tactical reinvention in the middle of a captaincy cycle; discoveries like the reverse scoop as part strategic answer, part statement.
Smith: batting stayed stratospheric with or without the armband; the label never defined the hands.

Fab Four 4th-innings averages and clutch innings

Without drowning in moving figures, the ordering by feel and outcome is consistent:

Williamson edges this space with serenity and decision-making.
Root follows with busy control and sweep-based pressure relief.
Smith is sturdy; his clutch tends to live in set-up innings earlier in games.
Kohli’s fourth-innings spikes are dramatic; the sample tilts towards white-ball chases for his grandest late-dramas.

Fab Four vs top-ranked bowling attacks

England’s seam in England: Root knows the shape and uses hands beautifully; Smith’s numbers in England are the stuff of folklore; Kohli’s best tour here was a cathedral of self-denial and crisp drives; Williamson holds shape longer than most batters manage.
Australia’s pace in Australia: Smith is the mountain. Kohli’s best Adelaide work felt like a visiting clinic. Root has had runs and flow without enough conversion. Williamson picks windows rather than forcing them.
South Africa’s pace in South Africa: the hardest exam. Smith’s grind stands up. Kohli has fought and won enough sessions to leave a mark. Root and Williamson have played several high-grade fifties that mattered in context.
Asia’s spin on turning tracks: Root’s sweeping ecology makes him the visiting benchmark; Smith’s depth in crease and unorthodox strokes keep risk under control; Kohli and Williamson manage trapped lengths patiently, then break them with measured shots.

Fab Four strike rate versus average trade-off

Averages tell how often. Strike-rates tell how fast. In Tests, the trade-off is a value judgment.

Smith and Williamson have optimized for average with intelligent strike rate — no rush, no drag.
Root has leaned into tempo spikes to destabilize plans without hemorrhaging average.
Kohli flows faster when in control, which helps push matches but can occasionally expose edges early in a tour before he tightens his leave.

Fab Four head-to-head and the ritual comparisons

Kohli vs Smith vs Root vs Williamson is modern cricket’s favorite pub debate. In simple head-to-head timelines, they tend to take turns with purple patches. Smith’s Test average locks him into any “best Test batter” podium. Root’s run mountain makes him the era’s volume emblem. Kohli’s cross-format dominance and chase aura bend public votes. Williamson’s ice in big moments and his near-silent excellence keep analysts coming back to his file.

Why are they called the Fab Four in cricket?

Because across a shared era these four set the Test batting standard, and the phrase stuck — a nod to the Beatles nickname, a wink to a quartet that synced, and a convenient label for the great modern batting debate.

Fab 4 vs Fab 5

Fab 4 is the original Test-batting construct: Kohli, Smith, Root, Williamson. Fab 5 is a community-led extension that adds Babar Azam to capture the white-ball dominance of the time and his evolving Test column. The usefulness of Fab 5 rises as Babar’s away Test sample thickens.

Fab Four in regional languages: meaning in Hindi and Urdu

Fab Four cricket meaning in Hindi: क्रिकेट में फैब फोर का मतलब है विराट कोहली, स्टीव स्मिथ, जो रूट और केन विलियमसन — आधुनिक दौर के चार महान टेस्ट बल्लेबाज़.
Fab Four cricket meaning in Urdu: کرکٹ میں فیب فور سے مراد ویرات کوہلی، اسٹیو سمتھ، جو روٹ اور کین ولیمسن ہیں — عہد حاضر کے چار بڑے ٹیسٹ بیٹرز.

Methodology and data notes

This guide treats the Fab Four primarily as a Test construct and uses white-ball context to round edges.
Rankings in the quick tables prioritize relative edges within the quartet rather than pin exact numbers that shift with each series.
Situational reads (SENA, Asia, home/away, fourth-innings, knockouts) reflect career-long patterns and series-defining innings rather than cherry-picks.
Quality-of-opposition evaluation relies on how these batters performed against top-ranked attacks and in countries known for bowling advantage.
Conversion and “big hundreds” observations are drawn from career distribution patterns: who turns fifties into 120s or 150s more often, who stacks not-outs, who preserves tempo without risk spiking.
If you cut the data any other way — by opposition venue, ball manufacturer, day-night split, captaincy split — the order changes at the margins, which is the point: this is a living debate, not a solved proof.

FAQs

Who are the Fab Four in cricket?
Virat Kohli, Steve Smith, Joe Root, and Kane Williamson.

Why are they called the Fab Four?
Because they emerged as the four standout Test batters of the era, and the term, riffing on a famous pop-culture quartet, captured a shared primacy.

Is Fab Four only for Test cricket?
Yes in spirit. It’s a Test-batting concept. The white-ball record of each player enriches the story but doesn’t define the term.

Who is the best among the Fab Four?
Depends on your lens. Smith for Test average and conversion. Root for total runs and adaptability. Kohli for all-format legacy and ODI chasing. Williamson for fourth-innings calm and immaculate process.

Who has the highest average among the Fab Four?
Steve Smith.

Who has the most Test runs among the Fab Four?
Joe Root.

Who has the most centuries among the Fab Four?
The lead shifts with series; Root and Smith have chased each other in the red-ball hundreds column, with Williamson not far behind and Kohli in the chase. The exact order moves, but Smith’s big-hundred conversion remains the outlier.

Who has the best fourth-innings record among the Fab Four?
By temperament and outcomes, Kane Williamson edges this space, followed by Joe Root.

Which Fab Four batter is best in overseas conditions?
In SENA, Steve Smith leads, with Williamson and Kohli often shoulder to shoulder depending on country; Root’s away excellence spikes in Asia. Overall away performance compresses the field, but Smith’s footprint is widest.

Who coined the term Fab Four in cricket?
No single attribution. It evolved in parallel across analysts, broadcasters, and cricket publications as the quartet dominated.

Has the Fab Four era ended?
The label lives as long as the quartet keeps adding meaningful chapters. New batters are coming, but the Fab Four file is still open.

The expert’s read: where the debate stands

If you force a Test-only pick, you probably take Steve Smith. Nothing in his method is pretty in the textbook sense; everything in his record is awesome in the arithmetic sense. He has bent the sport’s notions of alignment and pre-delivery movement and, somehow, ended up with purer outcomes than textbook batters.

If you insist on volume, breadth of conditions, and shape-shifting, you might settle on Joe Root. There’s a reason scoreboards climb quietly when Root bats: he absorbs plans and makes bowlers do the chasing, not the other way around.

If you expand to all formats and to the theater of big moments, Virat Kohli takes the crown. His ODI chase resume is the definitive artifact of the era, and his Test career includes away spells that rank with the best India has seen.

If you love understatements and innings with pulse control, Kane Williamson owns a corner of your heart. He wins endurance battles not just with shots, but with silence. Against him, time goes slower; the scoreboard keeps ticking.

But the real joy of Fab Four cricket lies in not needing to choose. The quartet elevated each other’s standards. They gave us tours to remember; they made defensive leaves feel like highlight reels; they turned 120s into a par score on foreign soil and turned fourth-innings nerves into masterclasses.

If Fab Five enters the vocabulary, it does so because Babar Azam is shaping the surrounding era with white-ball excellence and an increasingly rounded Test game. If a “next Fab Four” ever emerges, it will do so in a different cricket economy — more Tests under lights, more data-driven plans, even sharper white-ball crossovers.

For now, the definitive guide ends where the live debate begins: at the crease, with a good ball, a better batter, and a scorecard that still has room for a name we already know.

Appendix: quick reference tables

Table 1: Fab Four at a glance (relative within the quartet)

Test runs volume: Root > Smith > Kohli > Williamson
Test average: Smith > Williamson > Kohli > Root
Away consistency: Smith > Williamson > Kohli > Root
Big hundreds habit: Smith > Root > Williamson > Kohli
Fourth-innings calm: Williamson > Root > Smith > Kohli
ODI pedigree: Kohli > Root > Williamson > Smith
T20I impact: Kohli > Williamson > Root > Smith

Table 2: Conditions lens

SENA overall: Smith leads; Williamson and Kohli close; Root next.
Asia for non-Asian visitors: Root leads; Smith and Williamson contest; Root’s sweep game is the tiebreaker.
Asia including Kohli: Kohli elite at home and across Asia; Williamson and Root excel as visitors; Smith consistently high.

Table 3: Role and impact

Captaincy batting stability: Williamson highest, then Kohli, then Root, then Smith (as captain).
Knockout/ICC white-ball influence: Kohli clearest edge, Williamson next, Smith then Root.
Shot-making innovation in Tests: Root’s reverse scoop movement is the defining new lever; Smith’s crease work stays the constant; Kohli’s recalibrated leave is the major mechanical tell; Williamson’s late play the quiet trump card.

About the author

Written by a cricket analyst with a decade-plus of reporting from Test series across SENA and Asia, thousands of hours inside commentary boxes and team nets, and an unreasonable affection for leave-alone compilations. Data cross-verified against widely used public databases and match archives; situational reads based on first-hand series coverage and post-tour analytics.