Is Kohli a test great?

In reply to openning
You have to add Kane Wiliamson to that list. The Fab Four of the last decade have been Williamson, Root, Smith and Kohli. Kohli ranks fourth among them. The other three toss up for 1, 2 and 3. On the Kanhai issue, Kanhai makes the great list because of his style, more than his numbers. Read CLR James. Kanhai took batsmanship in tests to levels that we are now seeing in T20 cricket in the 21st century.

I was just perusing his stats and a few things stood out!
The only place Kohli averaged above 50 is on home soil in India.

In reply to PalsofMine

Rohan was a great batsman, but his performance was not at the level of the players mentioned.
As you may have noticed, I never included Sir Gary.
When you are choosing the All-time greats in a squad, performance and roles matter.
Not how one looked at the crease.

On the subject of batting greats, be it Windies great or world great, if the batter is Chris Gayle (or any other batter that is polarizing or disliked), then people jump through hoops to discredit him/them. Enter Kholi who is beloved on this board and the goal posts shift. An average of 50, which research on this board will show has been the overwhelming standard used to determine greatness, disappears. We now introduce how stylish the batter is/was (Rowe, Samuels, Hooper now enter the fray). How the batter looks fixing up himself prior to a delivery (Reifer is now great); how excellent one is at clapping (let me digress here).

1. Kholi is NOT a batting Test great. He's an outstanding Test batter and an all-time great shortened version batter.
2. Any talk of modern-day Test greats starts with Kane Williamson.

In reply to JoeGrine

Would you be kind enough to define greatness in sports?

In reply to JoeGrine

Great post!
We have diluted the Hall of Fame to the extent that up is down and left is right.

One does not have to be the greatest to be great.
Sir Gary is the greatest, Gayle is great.

The next thing you know, nightwatchmen who score a century will be considered great.

In reply to Fivestar

Say no more!!

In reply to openning
Gayle was way above average from school days.
I don’t have him or Sarwan as test greats but I would pay to see both bat.

In reply to Chrissy

Sarwan does not have numbers or innings to be defined as great. There are very few test batsmen with two triples, especially playing in a team without quality international batsmen.
Gayle and Shiv are two great West Indians.
Two of my five favourite batsmen are Basil Butcher and Seymour Nurse.
Seymour, in his short test career, scored two double one against Australia, and his last test was a double hundred in New Zealand.

Seymour 29 test 47.60, 6- 100s
Basil, 44 test 43.11,211 n o highest score 7-100s
I have Seymour to be the fourth-best middle-order Barbadian batsman

Sarwan was a fabulously gifted batsman whose career ended prematurely because of the CWI (then WICB). Still he managed an average of over 40 in both formats, played some excellent innings and in my view, has been one of our best players in recent times. Yea he could have got 10,000 runs at 50; which seemed very likely at a certain point in his career but as is the case with a lot of our cricketers, the system doesn’t let them realise their full potential.

Even arguably one of the greatest batsman of all time, Brian Lara had at least 3000 more runs left in him, he had another 2 years and had he not missed few series because of disputes with sponsors and administrators