Team India as well as Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Virat Kohli is one of the best batsmen in world cricket in recent times. While he failed to hit a hundred in any format since 2019, former Pakistan captain Muhammad Yousuf believed he will soon do it as a batsman like him it is only a matter of time for him to get back in the zone.
“To achieve what he has already achieved is formidable and to me, scoring 70 Test and One-day International hundreds (by Kohli) is extreme,” said Yousuf in a recent interview.
Notably, Yousuf still holds the world record of scoring most runs in the longer format in a calendar year when he amassed 1788 runs way back in the 2005-06 season. However, he would not like to compare Kohli with batting legend Sachin Tendulkar.
“He (Kohli) has done it and jitney praise karo isko kum hai (no matter how much we praise him, it is less). But at same time I don’t think there is a comparison between him and Sachin (Tendulkar). Tendulkar was a different class altogether. He scored 100 international hundreds and keep in mind the era he played in and the bowlers he played against,” said he.
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However, he also claimed that India needs to produce technically better batsmen as compared to his nation, Pakistan. And, he further claimed that stakeholders in Pakistan cricket required to sit down and take a call about the future of cricket in Pakistan because they need young players to also focus on other formats instead of only T20 format. Otherwise, they will face problems in the batting department in future.
“Their young batters have always had role models to follow from one era to another. That is why even today, they (India) are producing better batsmen. I was lucky that when I started playing I had players like Inzamam ul Haq and Saeed Anwar to look up to and was also coached by a great like Javed Miandad,” said Yousuf, who is now a batting coach at the PCB’s high-performance centre as well.
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“T20 is fun cricket and I see it as a blessing in disguise as it had immensely improved the financial status of our players. But at same time, I think you can even be successful in this format by sticking to the basics and intelligent cricket with less percentage of risky shots,” he further added.
However, before signing off, he said that batsmen like Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Babar Azam, Kane Williamson and Steve Smith are the perfect examples of this as they all are the best across formats as well. However, he also said that Smith is a bit different among others due to his style of play as well.
