New Delhi: That Virat Kohli is destined to be among the pantheons of all-time greats is an oft-repeated assertion but for former Australia captain Michael Clarke, the India skipper is already the ‘greatest ODI batsman to have ever played the game’.
Kohli, the World No.1 Test and ODI batsman, led India through a historic tour of Australia, during which the team won the Test and ODI rubbers and drew the T20I series.
“To me, Virat is the greatest batsman to have ever played one-day cricket. I have no doubts after seeing what he has achieved for India,” Clarke, himself a former World Cup-winning captain, told this agency in an interview.
Kohli has already scored 10,385 runs in 219 ODIs with an astounding average of 59-plus, including 39 hundreds. An unabashed Kohli fan, Clarke said that the 30-year-old Indian’s passion is unmatchable.
“You have to respect Virat’s passion to win games for his country. Yes, he has aggression but no one can question his commitment, how much he has achieved. He is the greatest in ODIs,” Clarke said.
While Kohli’s craft continues to evoke awe, his predecessor MS Dhoni’s current form has the cricketing world divided. “MS knows how to react to any given situation. He has played 300 plus ODIs so he knows how to go about his job,” Clarke said.
But would Dhoni have been as effective as he was in the third ODI against Australia if the target would have been 330 instead of 230? “I think he would have played differently. It was 230 and he had a particular strategy and it would have been different if the target would have been bigger,” he said.
