Alastair Cook Names India Batsman Who Can Match Brian Lara’s Genius

Legendary batsman Alastair Cook played with some of the greatest batsmen of the modern era during his illustrious career. The former England batsman, who started his Test career with a stunning hundred in India in 2006, played against the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Jacques Kallis, Brian Lara, Ricky Ponting, Rahul Dravid, Kumar Sangakkara and many others before retiring in 2018.

And among all the greats that he played with or against, Alastair Cook rates former West Indies skipper Brian Lara as the best. Alastair Cook recalled a tour game where Lara had scored a century in a session to leave him awestruck.

“I was part of an MCC team that played West Indies at Arundel in the first match of their 2004 tour,” he told the Sunday Times.

“We had a decent bowling attack — Simon Jones, Matthew Hoggard and Min Patel, all of whom were England players.

“Brian Lara scored a century between lunch and tea which made me realise I was witnessing another level of batsmanship altogether. It was genius at work,” added Alastair Cook.

He further named four cricketers who he believed came close to the genius of Lara. England’s all-time leading Test run-scorer said that former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting, Sri Lanka great Kumar Sangakkara and South Africa’s Jacques Kallis were some of the players who were close to Lara.

“The ones who came close to that when I was playing for England were Ponting, Kallis and Sangakkarra,” he said.

He then named one current batsman who he thinks can match Lara’s strokeplay. The former cricketer named current India skipper Virat Kohli as the player close to Lara for his ability to score freely across formats.

“Now you would have to put Virat Kohli in that group, especially for his ability to score so freely in all three formats,” said Alastair Cook.

Kohli is widely regarded as the best batsman in the world right now. The 31-year old has already scored a staggering 43 centuries in ODIs and has so far scored 11,867 runs in just 248 games. In Test cricket, he has scored 7,240 runs in 86 matches at an average of 53.62 and with 27 hundreds.

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