The former Australian leg spinner Shane Warne, earlier today, picked his top 5 batsmen among all the batsmen active in test cricket at the moment and he, surprisingly, didn’t include the Indian test opener and the newly appointed Indian limited over captain Rohit Sharma in the list.
Rohit has primarily been a top limited-overs batsman for most parts of his career, but he recently seems to have resurrected his test career too, as he scored his first overseas test hundred on the England tour and was pivotal in India taking an unassailable 2-1 lead.
But, Shane Warne seems to have picked his top 5 mostly on the basis of past performances. Featuring at no. 1 in Warne’s list is the former Australian captain Steve Smith, who has recently been out of form in test cricket, but was declared the test cricketer of the decade by the ICC.
Warne has picked the England captain Joe Root as his second top batsman, which makes sense on recent form, as Root is the highest run-scorer in Test cricket in the current calendar year and might be on his way to creating a world record in the remaining two test matches that he has to play in Adelaide and Melbourne.
Kane Williamson and Virat Kohli are at no. 3 and no. 4 in the pecking order of Shane Warne
Kane Williamson features third in the pecking order of Shane Warne, which is again a justifiable pick. Williamson might not have done much in the lone test match he played on the India tour, but he scored heaps for New Zealand in the last season and saw off a high-pressure chase in the WTC final with excellent composure.
Virat Kohli is at no. 4 for Warne, despite him being massively struggling with his form in all formats of the game in the last year or so. Kohli is someone who is used to scoring big hundreds, but barring a few half-centuries here and there in patches, the Indian test captain has been nowhere close to his old self.
Marnus Labuschagne rounded off Warne’s top 5, which he picked while speaking on Fox Cricket. Labuschagne might be a slightly debatable pick ahead of the Pakistan captain Babar Azam. The Aussie no. 3 hasn’t really had a lean patch in his Test career so far, but he has never toured the subcontinent, where most of the Aussie batsmen have been tested over the years.
Babar Azam, on the other hand, has played all around the world and has shown his versatility with the bat in test match cricket in all conditions. He has got a hundred even in Australia, which he scored on his last test tour down under.
