Champions Trophy: Is Virat Kohli trying too hard? Kumble, Manjrekar analyse star Indian batter's struggles

Anil Kumble and Sanjay Manjrekar analyse Virat Kohli's struggles with form, spin bowling, and pressure in the 2025 Champions Trophy, highlighting his diminished big-hitting ability and confidence issues.

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Former India captain and coach Anil Kumble believes that Virat Kohli is trying too hard, which is making it more difficult for him to regain form during his lean patch, as per ESPNcricinfo. Since the 2023 World Cup, Kohli has struggled in ODIs, managing just 137 runs in six innings with a solitary half-century. In India's opening match of the 2025 Champions Trophy against Bangladesh in Dubai, he scored 22 off 38 balls before falling to legspinner Rishad Hossain.

"Having been through a lean patch, so to speak, especially in white-ball cricket - he hasn't had that kind of run for a long period of time - I feel he's trying a bit too hard," Kumble said, as per quoted from ESPNcricinfo. 

"You have that in players who have been there and done that before, and everyone sort of looks up to you saying he's the guy who's going to take the game away and he's the one guy who is the important man in the team," he said on ESPNcricinfo Match Day.

"When you have that kind of pressure and you have that kind of expectation, you suddenly start putting undue importance to all of that and then try hard to do well. When you do that, you're not really relaxed. The best innings that I am sure he's played, he's not even thinking about all of that. The best bowling performances, you're not even thinking about all of that," he added.

"I think he's trying a bit too hard. You can see that in the way he is going about his innings. He just needs to not worry about it. Rohit [Sharma] comes in there, has the freedom because there is plenty of batting and all of them are in great form. Similarly for Virat, he just needs to come in and not worry about anything else," he noted.

Notably, Kohli's last six dismissals have come against spin, with five of them against legspinners. Kumble attributes this to Kohli's eagerness to score rather than focusing on rotating the strike effectively.

"To start off against spin, on surfaces like that, you need a lot of confidence. He's certainly trying too hard to manoeuvre that," Kumble said, as quoted from ESPNcricinfo. "He's a good player of spin when he's in form, when he's wanting to just knock singles off and keep rotating the strike. Now he's trying too hard to score runs rather than just manoeuvre, and that's been his game plan," he added.

"All players go through tough moments in their career, but I get a feeling watching him bat, I think he is putting a lot more pressure on himself. He just needs to relax a little bit and not worry too much about the outcome of what happens on the field rather than just go out there and have the freedom to just go and play naturally, what he does really well," he noted.

Former India batter Sanjay Manjrekar pointed out that Kohli no longer possesses the explosive big-hitting ability and that his dip in form, which began during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Australia, has put him under pressure. "He's in a tight corner, Virat Kohli. His confidence is still down," Manjrekar said, as quoted from ESPNcricinfo.

"He wants to still show that he's up there for a fight, and I am starting to see maybe there's a little bit of bravado as well, and why not? You can't be revealing what's inside you," he said.

"Rohit Sharma still has the big game. He can step out and hit a guy over extra cover and play the short-arm pull and [is] willing to take chances. Virat Kohli doesn't have the big game anymore. We've seen on occasion him playing the big shot, but he can't hit at will hit like a Shubman Gill does," he added.

"What happened is, after that hundred in Australia, had he just carried on that form... you know it's a confidence thing as well - when you're out of form and you don't have confidence you suddenly don't quite get that power and the courage to hit the big shots," he said.

During that series, Kohli scored an unbeaten 100 in Perth's second innings but managed only 90 runs across his other eight innings. Manjrekar also noted that spinners now approach Kohli with greater confidence, attacking him aggressively, knowing that he is less likely to punish them with big shots.

"That slip after Australia where he really struggled... I saw when he got a fifty against England in the one-day series, it was actually more of an insight into how Virat Kohli is batting," Manjrekar said, as quoted from ESPNcricinfo.

"I thought he batted superbly in South Africa when India were there, in Australia that hundred came when already 300 runs were on the board. At this stage, I'm looking at him down on confidence," he added.

"The batting mechanism is not staying with him. And you know what? There was somebody who said many years back to us that as you start ageing, your luck also starts running out. And look at Virat Kohli, you've got to feel for him," he noted.

"What kind of a surface is he going to get for the next two matches? Surfaces that you would hate batting on. Slow, turning pitches. So it's not helping his cause either," he added.

"When he comes into bat, the spinners come on. And once the spinners know that you're not going to be hitting them for three sixes straight down the pitch or over midwicket - Rohit Sharma can still do it, KL Rahul can do it, Shubman Gill can do it - so the spinners also are bowling the kind of deliveries they'll get wickets off because they don't fear backlash from the batter," he said.

"So he's cornered in a way. What he needed in this tournament are flat pitches like the ones in Pakistan. But if he finds a way out of this and he finds another peak of Virat Kohli, that will tell you a lot more about the man and how he's built," he remarked.