Former England captain Alastair Cook is widely regarded as one of England's greatest batsmen of all time. Cook is the country's highest scorer in Test cricket, with 12,472 runs in 161 matches. In his career, he has played against some of the leading run-scorers of the game, and he recently named one batsman who he believes tops the list.
In an interview with Sunday Times, Cook chose West Indies' Brian Lara as the best batsman he played against. He recalled one of the innings of Lara from a tour game which left him awestruck.
“I was part of an MCC team that played West Indies at Arundel in the first match of their 2004 tour,” Cook recalled.
“We had a decent bowling attack — Simon Jones, Matthew Hoggard and Min Patel, all of whom were England players.
“Brian Lara scored a century between lunch and tea which made me realise I was witnessing another level of batsmanship altogether. It was genius at work," said the former England batsman.
In addition, Alastair Cook also named four batsmen who come close to the genius of Brian Lara. However, he didn't name Sachin Tendulkar in the list. "The ones who came close to that when I was playing for England were Ponting, Kallis and Sangakkara," said Cook.
When asked if any of the modern-day batsmen could reach the level of Brian Lara, Cook named Indian captain Virat Kohli.
Cook said, "Now you would have to put Virat Kohli in that group, especially for his ability to score so freely in all three formats."
Virat Kohli is the only batsman to have an average of over 50 in all the three formats of the game. While he has amassed 11,867 runs in 248 ODIs, he has scored 7,240 runs in 86 Tests. In addition, Kohli has scored 70 international centuries so far.
