Tilak Varma paga FreeSish

Better late than never! Tilak Varma was having a mediocre Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 season. He wasn’t even averaging 30 and his strike rate was below 135. His last 30+ score came on April 13. It’s almost been 2 months since then. The talented left-hander struggled even when he got some runs. Nothing was going in his favour.

No success meant that the Mumbai Indians (MI) were changing his batting positions way too often. He batted at numbers three, four, and five. Sometimes he wasn’t even sent. But come the IPL Playoffs, Tilak turned his mojo back on. In the Eliminator against the Gujarat Titans, he was sent in at number four and scored an important 25-run knock from just 11 balls.

Tilak Varma redeems himself

But that wasn’t all. Tilak had saved his best. For a chance to enter the IPL 2025 Final, MI had to beat Punjab Kings in Qualifier 2. In a rain-interrupted match, batting first was going to be a disadvantage. And MI lost Rohit Sharma early, in the 3rd over. Instead of sending Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya chose Tilak to bat at one down.

It was a risky ploy. The southpaw had batted at 3 before in IPL 2025 but frankly, given his returns, it seemed like a big risk. But the punt came off. On his second ball, Tilak scored a six. He was going to take on the bowlers. His job seemed to never let the run flow stop.

He slowed a touch when Jonny Bairstow was firing on all cylinders but knowing that Suryakumar would need a little while to settle in, he went on the aggressive. He attacked the pacers and gave the strike to Suryakumar to tackle Yuzvendra Chahal.