London, July 12 (IANS) Premier New Zealand batter Kane Williamson lauded talismanic India batter Virat Kohli by calling him the greatest all-format player cricket has witnessed in the last 15 years. He also praised Kohli for overcoming challenges like the intense scrutiny on his performances by a cricket-mad nation like India.

Kohli and Williamson, along with fellow batters – Australia’s Steve Smith and England’s Joe Root, formed the ‘Fab Four’ of cricket’s modern era batting. The quartet dominated the sport with their exhilarating knocks across all formats for over a decade. While Kohli has stepped away from Test and T20Is, Smith has retired from ODIs.

Root and Williamson, meanwhile, haven’t been sureshot starters in T20Is for quite some time now. “Virat is probably the greatest all-format player we have seen for probably in the last 15 years, and (he) has his own challenges. In an absolutely cricket-obsessed country, he has been at the top of that tree.”

“Look, there are great sorts of relationships and friendships with all of them in slightly different ways and we have stayed in touch in a lot of ways as well. But, (there is) not really that sort of competitive thing. I think you are just in teams and willing to compete for those teams,” said Willamson to Sky Sports’ on the sidelines of day three of third Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy Test at Lord’s.

Williamson is in England as part of his domestic cricket stint with Middlesex and revealed he happened to meet Kohli, who resides in the city with his family. “Yes, we did (meet). It was quite funny, just a full circle, and that’s the other part of it.”

“(We have) not just played cricket but lived our lives in some sort of parallel way for a huge percentage of our lives, whether that’s having kids at similar times or experiencing different things as you get older. So you do connect on different levels,” he added.

–IANS

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