IPL: How did Tilak Varma battle poor form to bring MI back to winning ways

Tilak Varma may be only 23, but he was very much among the chosen five—alongwith Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya and Jasprit Bumrah—to have been retained by Mumbai Indians when they rebooted in the last mega auction. He showed a maturity far beyond his age to adapt his batting as per the match situation since his IPL debut in 2022. The only thing missing in his IPL track record till Monday, 20 April, was a century.

And it came when the team needed it the most against a consistent Gujarat Titans at the later’s fortress—ending a four-match losing streak for the five-time champs. The pressure of losing that many matches in a row in IPL can often make the most successful of teams look like a divided camp—and it was not an exception with the Mumbai Indians. A seventh spot on the table, with two wins from six matches, may not look as healthy as the team would like to be but it at least gives them a plank to bounce back.

A 45-ball century—joint fastest for MI with Sri Lankan legend Sanath Jayasuriya achieving it in the inaugural 2008 edition—must have come as a huge relief for Tilak who had scraped together 43 runs from previous five innings. He followed the time-tested method of spending sometime in the middle, scoring only 17 runs from the first 20 balls before exploding at the backend of the innings.       

‘’It (101 not out) was very important for the team and for me,’’ Tilak told the broadcasters. ‘’Over the last four or five games, the one thing constantly running through my head was that I hadn’t spent much time in the middle and hadn’t faced many balls, so my aim was to spend some time at the wicket and then adapt according to the team's situation.’’

 Explaining his approach, Tilak said he assessed the pitch early and focused on straight hitting to counter the slow nature of the wicket. ‘’Whenever MI comes to Ahmedabad, they usually give us a black soil wicket, which is a bit slow in nature. It’s not that our batters cannot adapt, but we know what we can do if there is more bounce,’’ said Tilak, a key member of the Men in Blue in T20 format with a T20 World Cup and Asia Cup already on his shelves.

 ‘’Since it was slow and low, we had to adjust and try to hit straight. There wasn’t much bounce, so playing across the line to deliveries in line with the stumps was risky. I decided to hit straighter and I read the conditions well; thankfully, I was able to score some runs.’’

While his lacklusture batting form possibly saw him coming in at number five, which needed him to explode in the last six overs, Tilak was candid enough to say that his preferred position is number three. ‘’Personally, I like batting at number three a lot. However, I am happy to bat wherever the team needs me because since childhood, I have practised in a way that allows me to play confidently in any position. But if someone asks me, I would always say number three.’’

With the monkey off his back with the runs flowing off his bat, Tilak was optimistic about a turnaround though there is now a major question mark over Suryakumar Yadav’s dry run. ‘’We know what we are capable of, having several World Cup winners in the side, experienced players, and the skills we possess. If we execute well, we can be unstoppable. So it is important to keep our heads down and continue working hard," he said.