Spin great Shane Warne has heaped praise on Virat Kohli as one of the greatest batsmen. The record-breaking Indian captain is being compared with Sachin Tendulkar, the most prolific scorer the game has ever seen, and others like Viv Richards and Brian Lara, etc. And the Aussie legend while admitting that it's "very hard to judge eras", said he is ready to wait to know if the Indian captain will go down in the history as the greatest ever.
If Kohli continues his record-breaking spree, he is likely to eclipse Tendulkar's feats, which include hundred hundreds., 51 in Test and 49 in ODIs. The 30-year-old already has 64 international hundreds (25 in Tests, 39 in ODIs).
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"Very hard to judge when someone is playing and very hard to judge eras. Think about the bowlers in the 90s. Different surfaces that seamed. Now they're a lot flatter. The ball swung more. So many variables."
After Don Bradman, Tendulkar and Lara dominated the batting charts with former Aussie opener Mark Waugh often challenging the duopoly. They all flourished at a time when the bowling was at its best.
"But to think that someone was better than Brian Lara and Sachin – in those mid-90s – against Wasim [Akram], Waqar [Younis], etc; Curtly [Ambrose], Courtney [Walsh], etc; [Glenn] McGrath, Saqlain Mushtaq, Mushtaq Ahmed, Daniel Vettori, Muttiah Muralitharan, myself. You can go on"
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"Virat is breaking all the records, which is great but I want to wait," Warne told ToI.
Giving a classic example of how fans remember a player, Warne said that "what people are going to remember for you is the way you played the game."
"See, what people miss is this: You can set benchmarks, score those many centuries, average that high, score a lot many runs. But what people are going to remember for you is the way you played the game."
"Someone should run down the street and ask fans, how many runs did Mark Waugh make or what his average was? They wouldn't have a clue but chances are, here's what they'll say: I loved watching him play," he added.
But Warne already considers Kohli as the greatest, alongside the West Indin Viv Richards, in the ODIs.
"To my mind, what's already evident is that Virat is one of the best players of all time. In one-day team, he probably has go down with Viv Richards as the greatest ever, not so much for the record but for the way he plays his game. But I'll judge him at the end of his career," he added.
Kohli missed the last two matches of the ODis and the T20I leg of the New Zealand tour, which India lost 1-2.
He will be back in action in the India-Australia limited tours series later this month.
