AHMEDABAD: Left-hander Tilak Varma had made 43 runs off 32 balls in five innings before his maiden IPL century on Monday at the Narendra Modi Stadium. The noise surrounding his batting became more intense with each passing match. Answering all those questions, the 23-year-old reinforced his value to the team with a calm and aggressive shot in equal parts. His 101 off 45 balls, studded with seven sixes and eight fours, took MI to 199/5, a total that proved too high for the Gujarat Titans (GT), who lost by 99 runs.
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Coming to the crease when Titans’ new ball operator Kagiso Rabada was breathing fire and accelerating the speedometer with his spokes, Tilak started hitting by pushing ones and twos and playing the occasional dot ball but crucially steadied the ship along with Naman Dhir to bring a semblance of calm to the Mumbai Indians innings. His innings consisted of two parts: the first 22 balls yielded only 19 runs, without a single hit on the fence. The rest of the innings was a blur of fours and sixes, a display of unstoppable power.
Tilak’s childhood coach Salam Bayash reflected on the slight changes the batsman has made in his game. “I told him to spend some time in the crease before bowling shots and also to reduce the reverse sweep and play straight. The pitch was not that easy to hit and the Titans’ attack was good. I am happy with his century. He did not take reverse sweeps. Almost all his shots were straight or played straight,” Bayash said.
Even the opposition was amazed. Gujarat batting coach Matthew Hayden, in particular, was enthusiastic. “It was visible that the pitch had cracks, it was going up and down. Full credit to Tilak Varma, who put in a wonderful performance from 46/3. I once spoke to a fisherman and asked him about longevity in his life and career, and he told me that when there are a lot of fish around, everyone fishes. But what he (Varma) did was fish when no one else fished,” said the former Australian opener.
“We all know that MI is a dangerous team. They are notorious starters. As a rival team, we knew that and we blinked. And when you blink against a world-class player like Tilak Varma, even on a ground that is a bit spicy, that leads to your downfall. We couldn’t really retract the negative momentum that was going our way because of the performance we saw,” Hayden said.