Stuart Broad picks Joe Root ahead of Smith and Kohli

England pacer Stuart Broad has revealed that he believes that his England teammate Joe Root is the best batsmen in the world. In Broad’s book, Root is a better batsman compared to current India Test match skipper Virat Kohli and current Australian skipper Steve Smith.

However, whilst revealing his reasoning for the same, Broad stated that Root was someone whom he has played a huge amount of cricket with, in recent times. Moreover, the 30-year old went on to add that Root was someone who was capable of scoring runs in any conditions and is also consistently someone who has scored runs across all countries.

“I’d say Joe Root, but just because I’ve played a huge amount of cricket with him,” Broad told cricket.com.au when he was asked to judge the trio. “I know that he makes runs in a lot of conditions, pretty much all conditions, and he has scored runs at really big times for us as an England team. “I think when you’ve played closely with someone for that long period of time, you see a lot of their strengths. He, in my mind, is built up to be the best player I’ve seen because I see him every day.”

Broad also revealed that the best and perhaps the only way of getting Virat Kohli out was perhaps the fact that his only weakness was outside the off-stump. Broad also commended the consistency exhibited by Kohli and Smith in their recent Test records.

“One thing about Virat, the only dismissal you feel in the game with is a nick,” Broad said. “He’s so strong off the pads and he doesn’t really get bowled a huge amount. “In the conditions, we played there, his hunger for runs was just spectacular. The likes of Steven Smith and Joe Root, they have this consistency of every time they go out to bat they’re just desperate to score big runs and that makes them the top of the tree — that makes them the best players in the world.”