The world’s top eight teams will be eagerly waiting for the Champions Trophy to resume after a hiatus of eight long years in Pakistan and Dubai. Unlike the ODI World Cup and the long span of the World Test Championship where pedigree matters a lot, the turnaround time between matches in Champions Trophy is short, leading to unexpected results that evens out the odds for all teams. However, there are big players who are woefully out of form going into the tournament. We take a look at six such players whose form is a concern for their teams.
Australia are already depleted enough in terms of personnel going into the Champions Trophy. The loss of pace triumvirate of Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc’s calibre will bring down the morale of any team, but they could’ve had optimism going into an ICC event in the sub-continent had their lead spinner been performing. Zampa has toiled hard in the recent ODIs against Sri Lanka where he has bowled 14 overs and got just a single wicket on the same track where Lankan spinners ran riot.
The legspinner is coming off a lukewarm Big Bash League having claimed 12 wickets at an average of 21. In the subsequent outing in the ILT20 in the UAE, Zampa returned six wickets from five matches and averaged 24. However, he will go into the Champions Trophy thinking about his astounding haul of 73 wickets from 42 ODIs in Asia, including a four wicket haul in Pakistan back in 2022.
There has been enough said about Babar’s form and his place among the greats of the current generation, including unreasonable comparisons with Virat Kohli, who is going through a slump of his own. Since giving up captaincy after the 2023 ODI World Cup exit in the league stage, Babar has had no hundreds in any format. The worst part of Babar’s slump is his performances at home have nosedived.
Since the beginning of 2024, Babar has gone past the score of 37 only once in 17 international innings (five T20Is, 10 Test and five ODI) he played in Pakistan. Being promoted to an opener doesn’t seem to fit the 30-year-old as he is at his fluent best at No.3 in ODIs. Pakistan, who are the perennial wild cards at any ICC event, will need their premier batter to have that Eureka moment in the Champions Trophy if they are to mount a successful title defence.
The former New Zealand ODI captain is going through a rough patch of sorts. The left-hander has been out for a duck three times in the last four innings including the recent Tri-Series against South Africa and Pakistan. Just 57 from the last five ODIs is a poor return for a batter of Latham’s standards who has been a regular match winner for the Kiwis.
His half-century in the Tri-Series final was a fine knock but it doesn’t inspire confidence in the southpaw who was dismissed in every type of way in the last few games. The absence of a visible pattern with his struggles can also be a good thing for Latham in the Champions Trophy, as he is capable of doing damage when least expected.
Big players enjoy sustained periods of success, but when the troughs arrive, they are hard. Virat Kohli, being a generational great, is going through a low point in his career, despite the numbers saying otherwise. If looked at his last 10 ODI innings, Kohli has four fifties and two hundreds that saw him surpass Sachin Tendulkar’s tally of 49 ODI centuries list. However, he has had a poor run across all formats since retiring from T20Is after a match-winning half-century in the 2024 T20 World Cup final.
Kohli has scored one hundred and two fifties from 24 international innings at an average of just 22. His latest 52 off 55 balls against England might’ve been fine for others but not for Kohli’s stratospheric standards.
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His similar dismissals against Adil Rashid in the recent series showed a worrying trend of few bowlers repeatedly troubling Kohli. India will be wishing for a free-flowing version of Kohli who has an innate ability to convert fifties into hundreds, as they go into the Champions Trophy.
When Jofra Archer burst on to the international scene in 2019, he was a sight to behold. Strong and wiry build, smooth action and scary pace made him the next big thing. Archer even took the next big step towards it with amazing performances in the 2019 ODI World Cup which England won. However, an injury layoff that took multiple false dawns took a heavier toll on his body and prevented him from hitting full stride.
The 29-year-old made his full-fledged ODI return against Australia last September and managed six wickets from seven matches. Archer still looks like his older self sometimes when he beats batters with his tight lines and swing, but doesn’t seem to carry the threat across all phases of the game.
South Africa’s recent track record of making semifinals and finals at ICC events is a big plus, but their pace-bowling department was dealt a double blow with injuries to Anrich Nortje and Geral Coetzee. Kagiso Rabada will shoulder much of the burden and will need Lungi Ngidi back firing on all cylinders. Ngidi’s form has been concerning for the Proteas as he comes off a bad SA20 where he claimed just two wickets from five games and then conceded 128 runs from 16 overs in the Tri-Series against Pakistan and New Zealand and got just one wicket.
Even in the previous ODI series against Ireland in the UAE, the 28-year-old got four wickets from three games and got whacked for a wicketless 70 runs in the final ODI. The most concerning fact for South Africa is that Ngidi has played all eight matches on sub-continental tracks since 2024 and averages 38. If Temba Bavuma’s men are to bring home a second ICC trophy since the inaugural Champions Trophy in 1999, they need at least two solid performances from Ngidi.
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