Michael Vaughan : Steve Smith and Virat Kohli are ‘freak’ cricketers

Under Kohli’s captaincy, Team India equalled Australia’s record of nine consecutive Test series wins and in the South Africa tour, they will be on the verge of creating a new record of 10 consecutive Test series win. On the other hand, Australia is playing Ashes under Smith’s leadership and have already won the first two Tests and are in a good position in the ongoing third Test, thanks to Smith’s double century.

In response to England’s first innings score of 403, Australia faced a struggle at the start as they lost their openers cheaply. The Smith show came to the fore soon after and built a 124-run partnership with Usman Khawaja. The latter went back to the pavilion after his half-century, and was soon followed by Shaun Marsh. Smith then played a skipper’s knock, and was ably assisted by a superb century by Mitchell Marsh. Smith soon went on to score the second double-ton of his career.

There have been many occasions when the 28-year-old has been compared to Kohli, but the superior player among the two is still a topic of debate. Vaughan believes both of them are just incredible players who belong to the 'freak category' by themselves. 

The Indian skipper has been played 63 Tests and 202 ODIs for India in which he has scored 5268 and 9030 runs respectively. He has also scored 1956 runs at an average of 52.86 in 55 T20I. His Australian counterpart has scored 5557 runs at an average of 60.40 in 58 Test matches. Vaughan believed that Kohli is the best player across three formats and feels Smith is best in Tests.