Kohli has played more significant knocks in ICC tournaments than Babar can dream of. Yes Kohli has fallen short in ODI knockouts numerous times but that is a battle between him and his own legacy.
Babar wasn’t, isn’t and never will be at his level. He is not fit to lace his boots. Kohli belongs in the upper pantheons of batting greats, right next to Tendulkar, Sir Viv, Lara, Ponting etc. Babar is simply not in that league.
He doesn’t have the talent, the skill, the mentality, the charisma, the presence and the gravitas to be in that league but that is not his problem and not a big deal.
The problem are his deluded fans who try to portray him as someone he is not. Babar never asked to be compared to someone who is simply in a different league.
In the last 12 months, an old Kohli and a prime Babar have played three tournaments (Asia Cup 2022, T20 World Cup 2022, Asia Cup 2023) and Kohli has outclassed Babar.
Even an old, past his best Kohli is superior to a a prime Babar. I’m certain he will also outperform him in the upcoming World Cup but then the excuse will be that Kohli was playing at home, but if Babar is as good as Kohli (or better according to some special edition delusional folks), then prime Babar should be outperforming old Kohli even on Indian pitches.
Old Kohli is better than prime Babar and prime Kohli (2012-2018) was a completely different monster altogether and Pakistani fans are talking absolute nonsense by suggesting that Babar is or ever will be as good as prime Kohli.
Babar has done nothing special for Pakistan team. All this talk of him dealing with pressure and carrying the team by himself means nothing.
Babar has never carried the team on his own. He has rarely won matches for his team from precarious situations.
If you look at Kohli’s top 10 match-winning knocks, you won’t find a single knock that Babar is capable of replicating.
Furthermore, Babar has been a complete non-entity in Pakistan vs India encounter and now it is a very decent sample size.
Kohli has single-handedly defeated Pakistan more times than people can remember. He has like a dozen Man of the Match awards against Pakistan.
Babar hasn’t had 0.1% of the impact Kohli has had in Pakistan vs India encounters.
You will find players like Babar in every nook and corner of India. There is nothing that he does that they are incapable of.
He is just an excellent batsman and India have produced and continue to produce a truckload of excellent batsmen.
The difference between the two countries is the level of competition especially for top-order batsmen.
Players like Shaw can score double-hundreds in England’s domestic cricket and he is not even in contention, and the likes of Dhawan and Jaiswal are better than any ODI openers in Pakistan but they are out of the team.
It is completely futile to compare career trajectories and exposure of Pakistani and Indian batsmen because breaking into the Pakistan team - and establishing yourself - is a thousand times easier than doing the same in India.
If Babar was Indian, he would have played less than half of the matches by this point of his career and he would be far from a household name.
On the other hand, a lot of fringe Indian batsmen who are mocked by Pakistani fans right now would be superstars if they were in Pakistan.
For example, Rizwan wouldn’t play a single game across formats if Pakistan had KL Rahul, Kishan, Pant and Samson as WK options.