Virat Kohli & Co. should not be compared with past greats: Mohammad Yousaf

Former Pakistan middle-order batsman Mohammad Yousaf believes that the current Indian batsmen should not be compared with past greats.

While talking during a show, on a local news channel, the Pakistan batting great heaped praise on India’s legendary former batsmen.  

“In the past, teams, such as India, Australia and South Africa, had 3-4 quality players in the side. India, for example, had players like [Rahul] Dravid, Sachin [Tendulkar], [Virender] Sehwag, [Sourav] Ganguly, [VVS] Laxman and Yuvraj Singh. These six batsmen were playing in a single team. The current Indian team does not have such batsmen. You can’t compare the current players [such as Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma] with the class of Sachin and Dravid,” said Yousaf.

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Although, Yousaf did say that Indian skipper Virat Kohli was the best batsman in the world, at the moment, while also admiring Pakistan’s prolific batsman Babar Azam’s career trajectory.

“There is no doubt that Virat Kohli is the number one player in the world but if Babar Azam continues to improve, he will also go on to become the best player in the world,” he said. “I had my reservations, about his [Babar] performance in Test cricket, before the Australia tour. but he did really well there and is now scoring hundreds regularly in the longest format of the game.”

Yousuf played 90 Tests, 288 ODIs and three Twenty20 internationals (T20Is), in which he accumulated 7530, 9720, and 50 runs, respectively. The right-hander notched up 39 hundreds and 97 half-centuries during his illustrious career.