Melbourne: Ricky Ponting feels India captain Virat Kohli is the best one-day batsman in the world, but it is not yet time to call him a great of five-day cricket.

"Is Kohli the best batsman in the world? Yeah, he probably is. I thought he was six or seven months ago and he's probably taken it to another level since then," Ponting was quoted as saying by the 'Sydney Morning Herald'.

Kohli had an outstanding 2016 across formats as he guided India to comprehensive wins against the West Indies, New Zealand and England before taking over the captaincy in limited overs as well. Ponting said that captaincy in all formats would help Kohli even further.

"Is it too premature to call him the best ever? You can probably say that right now as far as his one-day cricket is concerned. He's the best in ODIs.

"His one-day record is outstanding and probably better than anybody who's ever played the game given how many hundreds (27) he's made. But let's give him a few more years as far as Test cricket is concerned.

"It's too early to be taking about him being one of the greats. I think the great players we always talk about - the Tendulkars, the Laras, the Kallises - those guys played 120, 130-200 Test matches. Virat's not even halfway along that path," the former Australia captain said.

Talking about the upcoming Australia tour of India, Ponting said the visitors will need to get Kohli out of his comfort zone to have any chances of doing well in the four-Test series.

"The one thing about Kohli is whenever there's any confrontation, he does get a little bit outside of his comfort zone.

"You can see that he gets ultra-aggressive, which may be a good thing for him or may be good for the opposition," Ponting said.

"We will wait and see what happens. I think he's a similar sort of character to me as well. He wears his heart on his sleeve. He's pretty animated and a very aggressive player.

"One thing I learnt about playing in India is the momentum that the home team can create, which you have to try and stop.

"For someone like Virat, you have to take his boundary-scoring areas away and make him score his runs in different areas or make him bat for a longer time to make his runs," Ponting added.