New Delhi: England's right-handed batsmen Joe Root is one of the most talented players in cricket world today. And comparisons have already been started with established players, like India's Test captain Virat Kohli.
The ongoing India-England series have provided a good platform to compare these two talents. The fact that, both the batsmen ranked in the top three in ICC's Test ranking makes this task even most interesting.
There's no doubt that Kohli is regarded as one of the finest batsmen. But Root has done more than enough to earn the right to be named alongside Kohli.
Talking about their respective current forms, Kohli has just about managed to outshine Root. The India captain has scored 405 runs in six innings at an average of 101.25, while Root's aggregate from the last six outings is 299 runs at an average of 49.8.
The England batsman, however, is unperturbed, and said that "it's always going to be there or at least for the next six months or so while we are in India.”
"But I think the way he plays is a lesson on how to play on these wickets. In this series, he's shown a great level of responsibility because when he's not got runs we look like we've been able to take a cluster of quick wickets and when we have got him out things have changed quite quickly,” he told Sky Sports.
"There must be a huge amount of pressure on him in that side and he must know that. To score the runs that he has done I think has been massive for them [if they are to succeed] in winning this series,” he added.
However, Root is slightly ahead of Kohli after 51 Tests. Root had made overall 4,402 runs at an average of 53.03 with 11 hundreds, whereas Kohli managed to score 3959 runs with an average of 48.28 with 14 hundreds.
Root has a very good track record against India, with 75.83 after five Test matches.
"It was nice to get off to a good start in the first game but twice after I got to 50 and didn't manage to kick on," Root said.Root has become the backbone of England cricket team.
