Virat Kohli is the best player in the world by a fair bit across formats: Brendon McCullum

Former New Zealand skipper Brendon McCullum expressed his admiration for Indian captain Virat Kohli once again as the former believes that the Delhi-born run machine would make a huge difference in the upcoming Test series between India and Australia. He also rated Team India higher than their Australian counterpart as the latter is still in a phase of transition.

In McCullum’s view, Kohli is the best batsman in the world by a country mile and that across all the three formats of the game. He mentioned that the tags people usually use to describe him like ‘brilliant’ and ‘world class’ have now become synonymous to his name.

Best in the world

Bazz, as popularly known in the cricketing fraternity, said, “He (Virat) is massive. The best player in the world by a fair bit across formats and absolute superstar in the game as well.” The tags ‘brilliant’ and ‘world-class’ have become synonymous with the Indian skipper particularly in the last 3 years and his RCB teammate doesn’t shy away from going with the trend and predicted that Virat would perform well again in Australia.

He also made a point on how Kohli has embraced captaincy as he is getting the right kind of support from the team as well as the Indian fans. “The position that he is in with captaining India with such a support base behind and what cricket means to the Indian people, it sits on his shoulders pretty comfortably,” McCullum added.

Saying that Virat is in the form of his life isn’t hyperbolic as he has scored over 2500 international runs this year and the stat is even more astonishing given that he didn’t play the Nidahas Trophy and the Asia Cup. He had a fabulous tour of Australia last time as well and the battle between Kohli and Australia’s bowling quartet is as already as mouthwatering as it can get.

Australia under pressure

Besides heaping praise on Virat, McCullum also made his observations on the Australian cricket team, he said, “They [Australia] are under a bit of pressure for sure and they are low on confidence too. And perhaps this is a great chance to try and get a win down there. Australia in their own conditions are tough but at the moment they are a wounded line up and they will have to discover a bit of class in the next few weeks otherwise I would say India looks a bit too strong.”

Being one of the hardest hitters of the cricket ball during his heydays, Brendon also pointed out that Australian team does tend to go overboard at times in the pursuit of victories, referring to the ball-tampering scandal which resulted in Steve Smith and David Warner serving a one-year ban.

~ Written by Harikrishnan Sivakumar

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