New Delhi: Former England captain Alastair Cook has hailed and lauded the batting pedigree of India skipper Virat Kohli by incuding him in his list of batsmen who came close to matching genius of legendary West Indies batter Brian Lara. England's top run getter in the longer form picked Kohli as one five all time great players of the game.

According to the former left-handed England opener, Kohli finds a spot in the list because of his sheer ability to score runs freely across formats.

‘Now you would have to put Virat Kohli in that group, especially for his ability to score so freely in all three formats," Cook said.

During a Q&A session with the Sunday Times, Cook recalled a 2004 tour game where the legendary West Indies batsman had scored a century in a session to leave him awestruck.

"I was part of an MCC team that played West Indies at Arundel in the first match of their 2004 tour," Cook said.

"We had a decent bowling attack — Simon Jones, Matthew Hoggard and Min Patel, all of whom were England players.

"Brian Lara scored a century between Lunch and Tea which made me realise I was witnessing another level of batsmanship altogether. It was genius at work," he added.

Lara, who is the only batsman to score 400 in a Test inning, had retired after scoring 11,953 runs in 131 Tests and 10,505 runs in 299 ODIs.

Apart from Kohli, the other players who found spot in Cook's list were Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis and Kumar Sangakkara.

"The ones who came close to that when I was playing for England were Ponting, Kallis and Sangakkarra," Cook, who captained England for 59 Tests, said.