James Anderson, who is the highest wicket-taker among pacers in Test cricket history with 704 wickets, weighed in on the big debate between Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli as the England cricket legend revealed who was the toughest batter to bowl to.

Anderson's legendary career, which lasted over two decades, saw him compete against both Tendulkar and Kohli for a significant period of time. Infact, Anderson dismissed Tendulkar nine times in Test cricket (23 innings), which is the most for any bowler. He also got Virat Kohli's wicket seven times (36 innings), the joint-most by any bowler (alongside Nathan Lyon) and the highest by a pacer.

Not only has Anderson been the most dominant bowler in history against the Indian cricket legends, who have dominated the sport for the better part of the last four decades but also seen them from a close distance for a long part of his career.

While the Sachin vs Virat debate has sprung in both Indian and world cricket circles, Anderson passed his judgement and hailed Kohli for being able to turnaround his fortunes after struggling against him during India's tour of England in 2014. Anderson revealed that while Kohli's outside off weakness was discovered by them, the ex-Indian captain managed to find a way to flip their battle. However, he claimed there was no such change in who dominated their head-to-head contest with Sachin.

"I had some success early against Kohli, the first time he came to England in 2014. I really exploited his weakness of outside off-stump, and then the next time I played against him – he had obviously gone back and worked on that – he was totally a different player. He really had taken his game to a different level, made it very difficult for not just me but for bowlers in general. I got him out 4-5 times in the first series and then didn't get him out in the next I played against him," said Anderson to Talk Sports in a podcast ahead of the upcoming India-England series.

"Against Sachin, for example, I didn't feel like there was that sort of shift in dominance. With Kohli, there was definitely a shift. Found him a very difficult player to bowl at because he had that steely mindset, wanted to get into a battle. He's very competitive and after that initial success, it was very difficult to bowl against," Anderson added.

Anderson also opened up on the difference in personalities between both players and pointed out he had a lot of verbals battles with Kohli, but that was not the case with Sachin.

"Kohli was a slightly different character than Sachin. Sachin was very mild, mannered; very calm at the crease. Virat was more expressive with his emotions. Wore them on his sleeves and you can kind of see it. In his captaincy, when he celebrated his wickets. I tried as much as I could to get that feeling out of the equation and just try to think of him as a batter and not too much about who it was. It was difficult at times; we had many battles on the field," Anderson said.

"I definitely had more verbal battles with Virat than with Sachin. With Sachin I tried not to. He was certainly at a different stage in his career when I played against him. He had this sort of God-like presence, and how he was held in India. It was incredible how the fans treated him and looked up to him. But as Virat's career went on, that became more and more like that for him. But at the start of his career, it wasn't quite intimidating," Anderson concluded.

Anderson made his debut for England in ODIs in 2002 and played his first Test in 2003. He was part of the England Test team for more than two decades before his retirement last year. Sachin had already played international cricket for more than 16 years when he faced Anderson for the first time in 2006 in the longest format. Meanwhile, Kohli made his Test debut in 2011 and played Anderson in Tests for the first time in 2012, at a point when the English star had established himself as one of the finest bowlers in the world.

Both Kohli and Anderson retired from Test cricket over the last 12 months and will not be part of the upcoming India-England series, which starts from June 20.

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