Re: India in South Africa * kohli!
well these are the rankings which these players achieved within a certain 12 month period. for example gower scored 730 runs in an ashes series (i think in 1986) and based on that, he would have gained this ranking score for that year.
Zaheer abbas scored 580 runs in a 3 test match series against india in 1978 and then again i think over 600 runs against india in 1982…so zaheer would have gotten this ranking score for any of those years
but the real question is that…were these players greater players than kohli over a longer period of time say 5-8 years in different conditions? and the answer is NO. I mean zaheer only scored 14 test centuries in 79 test matches and most of them in pak and few in england. gower was also pretty one-dimensional. Kohli has scored everywhere heavily except england plus scored much more consistently and that too under pressure
now both gower and zaheer were 5 times more stylish than kohli. nothing comes close to zaheer when it comes to grace, style, suppleness…but that is a different topic.
Zaheer and Gover were all style than substance, Miandad was ugly but rightfully considered a great. Kohli is probably better than all on the list apart from Viv (definitely) and Lara (probably)