India, Jan. 1 -- International cricket nowadays is about shifting formats and priorities, and 2025 was no different. Two of the biggest cricketers in world cricket, Virat Kohli and Babar Azam, had different sorts of years as far as their time on the field is concerned.

Now, when we ask who had the better year? It is not just about the volume of runs; it is a question of quality, context, and match-defining weight. That lens matters for 2025 because both of them live very different calendars: Kohli's year was effectively an ODI-heavy statement with a small Test coda, while Babar carried the larger multi-format workload Pakistan demanded.

Let's start with the clean numbers.

Kohli also retired from Test cricket in May 2025, which explains...