India pacer Mohammad Shami heaped effusive praise on the team's opener Rohit Sharma. Shami, in an Instagram live chat session with former seamer Irfan Pathan, said Rohit "is a pure batsman", watching whom bat, is a learning class for all bowlers. 

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"I feel he is a package - to learn and to show what is cricket. He is a pure batsman. If he is batting, you will get to learn a lot," said Shami. 

"He will hit bowlers, and you get to learn. If you are a batsman, you get to see how much time he has to play a shot. You will also see how to bat in different conditions. He is a next level batsman. He is the best package."

Since starting opening for India in 2013, Rohit has been absolutely brilliant in white-ball cricket. The 32-year-old has now scored 9,115 ODI runs at an average of 49.27, with 29 hundreds. In T20Is as well, Rohit has been magnificent, scoring 2,773 runs at a strike-rate of 138.79 across 100 innings. 

He just recently began opening the batting in Test cricket too and dominated the home season against South Africa, Bangladesh before unfortunately missing the tour of New Zealand because of injury. 

"Sometimes, while I am commentating and watching Rohit Sharma play, I feel he is not a cricketer, but a poet," said Irfan. "He bats as smooth as butter, like a poem. The bowlers don't even realise that he is slamming, and he keeps on slamming."

(Inputs from IANS)