3 Big Players Who Underperformed in 2025
The year 2025 has provided plenty of reasons for its fans to rejoice. With young upcoming stars and match-winning players, the cricketers brought in memories to be carved long after. But far from everyone with star credentials has had a year to remember. Some of them are talented, famous, and highly unable to deliver. Today, let's look at the names of five well-known cricketers who were finding it hard to create that sort of impact that viewers expected in 2025.
Glenn Maxwell had a tough 2025. He performed poorly in the IPL,where he scored 48 runs in seven matches, in which he was able to take four wickets too in the bowling. He put up a slightly better performance when he was representing his nation, but it was not what the fans were used to.
He played four ODIs, and he scored 40 runs with an average of 20. He played 10 T20Is and scored 171 runs at an average of 21.37 with a strike rate of 169.30. It appears that his bowling display was better than his batting display. He picked two wickets in ODIs and six wickets in T20Is.
4. Charith Asalanka
Asalanka batted well in ODIs, making 494 runs in 12 innings, averaging 44.90, but his form in T20s became a source of concern. In 12 T20s, he managed only 156 runs at an average of 15.60 and a strike rate of 121.87. Sri Lanka too failed to get the desired results under him and he was replaced as captain of the T20I team by Dasun Shanaka just weeks before the T20 World Cup.
3. Babar Azam
Babar Azam continued to be one of the top breeds amongst batters in world cricket, yet 2025 was a bad year for him. The batting stalwart amassed 315 runs at 31.50 in five Tests. In ODIs, he managed to amass 544 runs at an average of 34. Even for T20s, his strike rate of 114.44 was below par for his standards, which further mounted the pressure on his form.
2. Surya Kumar Yadav
Surya Kumar Yadav lit up the IPL 2025 by becoming the first batting player to achieve 16 scores of 25+ in a T20 season. His scoring in the tournament culminated in him being the second-highest run-getter in the competition, only behind the likes of Sai Sudharsan. His international stint was less glowing. Scoring a total of 218 in 21 innings in the T20 format had him averaging 13.62 with a strike rate of 123.16. He was able to go the whole season without scoring a single half-century in the T20 format.
1. Rishabh Pant
Rishabh Pant had a mixed bag in 2025. Being the costliest IPL player for the year, he scored 269 runs in 14 innings with an average of 24.45. Though he scored a hundred towards the end of the season to improve his show, it was a below-par IPL appearance for Rishabh Pant.
Talking about the Test matches, he was at his best and averaged 48.38. However, in a test series of two encounters involving India and South Africa, where the Indian team was blanked 0-2, Rishabh scored a disappointing 49 runs in four innings, averaging 12.25. He also failed to find a berth in the T20 World Cup side and thus failed to play any format of one-day cricket in 2025.
