Virat Kohli vs Babar Azam: A tale of 2 'kings' looking to break out of form slump

Virat Kohli and Babar Azam are considered to be two of the greatest batters of the current generation, but are going through one of the worst slumps in form in their careers. What do the star batters need to break out of the poor run they're going through at the moment?

In Short

• Babar's intent with the bat has faced criticism
• Kohli has struggled againstg spinners in his last few innings
• Both men will be crucial for their sides in the Champions Trophy

When you talk about the greatest batters of the modern era, two names come to your mind. The all-conquering 'King of Indian cricket', Virat Kohli, has achieved major feats across all three formats of the game. Then Pakistan found their own king in the form of Babar Azam, who has gone from strength to strength since his debut in 2015.

Kohli broke Sachin Tendulkar's record for the most hundreds in ODIs during India's march to the final of the 2023 World Cup, while Babar became the fastest to 6000 runs in the 50-over format. Both men went on to captain their sides to varying success and have been pillars in the batting lineups for their teams. However, things weren't great for both men coming into the much-anticipated India vs Pakistan game in Dubai on Sunday, February 23.

Kohli hasn't scored a hundred since the 2023 World Cup and Babar has been slammed massively for his intent to score runs during high-pressure games. So what's been going wrong for both the stars and what do they need to do? Let's start with Babar.

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Where is the intent?

This has been the biggest criticism of Babar in the past few years, especially in the white-ball format. If you look at the New Zealand game, the 30-year-old had a simple job and that was to put the pressure early on the New Zealand bowlers. This role of senior player was amplified as Pakistan lost Fakhar Zaman to injury. So the tone had to be set by Babar early on, but what he did was essentially hold his team back.

And mind you, this is a man who has scored 3 T20I hundreds and has hit 447 boundaries and 73 sixes during his 128 matches in the format. And all these hundreds came while he was batting as an opener. So the 30-year-old clearly knows how to take the attack to the bowlers and take apart attacks with his elegant shots. But the New Zealand game saw him go into a shell, with Salman Agha and Khushdil Shah's knocks helping them to get to a respectable total in the end.

Babar ended up with 64 off 90 balls, a trend that plagued him even during the ODI World Cup. In 9 matches, Babar scored just 320 runs at a strike-rate of 82.90. This was summed up well by Cheteshwar Pujara during his analysis of the Pakistan vs New Zealand game.

"There was no intent...Babar’s footwork against the spinner was not good. He was not using his feet. He was not reaching to the ball. He was waiting for the ball to come to him,” Pujara said.

A trial by spin

Where Kohli has struggled in the ODI format has been his trial against spin. This is a batter who averages 44.06 against spinners throughout his career in 76 matches and has scored 3349 runs. But in the last ODIs he has played, Kohli has been dismissed by spinners.

In the last 3 matches, Kohli's kryptonite seems to be leg-spin as he was dismissed by Adil Rashid (twice) and Rishad Hossain. This is something that seems to be a worry, as per Sunil Gavaskar.

“It is to a great extent due to the fact that the bat face opens up, same thing happens when, when he's playing against the quicks in Australia. The bat face opening up, looking to play through the covers, opening the face of the bat, that gets him into trouble,” Gavaskar told India Today.

“So that is something that he's got to watch out for. A couple of times before he got out, he reached for Rishad, the ball turned, the bat face opened, and luckily the bat face opened, and so there was no nick. So that is something that he'll have to tighten up on now. But yes, I guess if you're getting out to the same kind of bowling, then you, you, you, there is a, there's a bit of concern there,” he added.

What does Babar and Kohli need to do?

When it comes to Kohli, the star batter always tries to find a way to break out when he faces a tough situation with a bowler. During IPL 2024, we saw Kohli be more aggressive against spinners and bring out the sweep shot. Recently, Kohli spent time with Sanjay Bangar to work on his backfoot game after the torrid Australia tour.

The process does seem to be underway for Kohli in Dubai as he arrived 90 minutes early for the practice session and led the whole squad through their drills.

For Babar, he will need to abandon the approach of being the anchor in a team that has enough firepower after him. This is a team that pulled off a record chase recently, with Mohammad Rizwan and Salman Agha putting the South Africa bowlers to the sword.

The star batter has to set the tone from the get-go now that Fakhar is out of the tournament and cannot look for his partner to do the job.

While the hype is all about India vs Pakistan, a battle of these 2 kings will surely be of prime focus. However, unlike in the past, this is not Babar vs Kohli. It is actually both men fighting against their inner self and looking to overcome a major struggle.