Stuart Broad picks Joe Root over Virat Kohli and Steve Smith

England fast bowler Stuart Broad has said that he would pick teammate Joe Root over Indian Test captain Virat Kohli and Australian captain Steven Smith as the best batsman in world cricket at the moment.

Broad said that he is picking Root primarily because he has played a lot of cricket with the Yorkshire man, and has seen him from close quarters. He believes that Root has the game to play and score runs in all conditions and across all formats, and in his career so far he has done justice to all this potential.

“I’d say Joe Root, but just because I’ve played a huge amount of cricket with him,” Broad was as quoted by cricket.com.au.

“I know that he makes runs in a lot of conditions, pretty much all conditions, and he has scored runs at really big times for us as an England team. I think when you’ve played closely with someone for that long period of time, you see a lot of their strengths. He, in my mind, is built up to be the best player I’ve seen because I see him every day,” he further added.

Broad who is playing for the Hobart Hurricanes said that he admired the consistency displayed by both Virat Kohli and Steve Smith. He further added, that he beleives that Kohli has a weakness outside the off-stump and that the only way to get him out would be early on in the innings.

“One thing about Virat, the only dismissal you feel in the game with is a nick,” Broad said.

“He’s so strong off the pads and he doesn’t really get bowled a huge amount. In the conditions, we played there, his hunger for runs was just spectacular. The likes of Steven Smith and Joe Root, they have this consistency of every time they go out to bat they’re just desperate to score big runs and that makes them the top of the tree — that makes them the best players in the world,” Broad further added.

There have been a lot of comparisons made in the recent past between Kohli, Root, Smith and Williamson and various people around the world have gone ahead with their own choices. Virat Kohli, himself acknowldeged that he finds Joe Root to be one of the best batsmen in the world and really admires his abilty to adjust across formats.