Virat Kohli-Sachin Tendulkar comparison: Will judge Kohli at the end of career - Shane Warne

Stopping short of making any assessments, Warne said that he wants to wait before making any comparisons, but conceded that the attitude and the way Kohli goes about playing is game is brilliant.

Indian captain Virat Kohli is perhaps the most complete batsman in the current times and his numbers are a testimony to his irresistible appetite across all the three formats. He has already scored 64 international hundreds in 77 Tests and 222 ODI appearances and is 37 short of crossing Sachin Tendulkar’s record.

File picture of Virat Kohli (Getty Images)

Comparisons between the two have been a topic of intense debates and deliberations and now former Australian leg spinner Shane Warne has said that any comparisons between the two are difficult to make since the conditions have changed drastically.

“Very hard to judge when someone is playing and very hard to judge eras. Think about the bowlers in the ‘90s. Different surfaces that seamed. Now they’re a lot flatter. The ball swung more. So many invariables. But to think that someone was better than Brian Lara and Sachin - in those mid-’90s - against Wasim, Waqar, Curtly, Courtney, McGrath, Donald, Saqlain, Mushy, Vettori, Murali, myself. You can go on,” Warne told Times of India.

Stopping short of making any assessments, Warne said that he wants to wait before making any comparisons, but conceded that the attitude and the way Kohli goes about playing is game is brilliant.

“Virat is breaking all the records, which is great but I want to wait. See, what people miss is this: You can set benchmarks, score those many centuries, average that high, score a lot many runs. But what people are going to remember you for is the way you played the game. Someone should run down the street and ask fans, how many runs did Mark Waugh make or what his average was? They wouldn’t have a clue but chances are, here’s what they’ll say: I loved watching him play,” Warne said.

“To my mind, what’s already evident is that Virat is one of the best players of all time. In One-dayers, he probably has to go down with Viv Richards as the greatest ever, not so much for the record but for the way he plays his game. But I’ll judge him at the end of his career,” he further added.