The 2022 Indian Premier League (IPL) season has arguably been the worst-ever for the Mumbai Indians (MI) since the league’s inception in 2008 as they look destined for a last-place finish. So far, the Rohit Sharma-led franchise have just won three games in 12 matches and sit on the 10th place in the table.
However, there have been few positives namely the performances of some young players. The one that has stood out is 19-year-old uncapped batter Tilak Varma who has been a shining light in MI’s darkest hour. Tilak is MI’s highest run-scorer in IPL 2022 with 368 runs in 12 innings at an average of 40.88. He also has two half-centuries to his name.
Ahead of MI’s big clash vs Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) on Tuesday (May 17) at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium, Sunil Gavaskar lavished praise on Tilak Varma as someone with a good cricketing brain and hailed his temperament.
“Tilak Varma’s temperament has been fantastic. In his knock against Chennai Super Kings, he walked into the middle when the team was under pressure. But the way he dealt in ones and twos (early on) was impressive,” Gavaskar said on Star Sports.
He played a wide range of shots and kept rotating the strike. This shows that he has a good cricketing head on his shoulders, and I think that’s important. Once you have that good cricketing brain, you will be able to lift yourself when things are not going your way. You can analyse yourself and get back to scoring runs,” he added.
The legendary Indian batter backed skipper Rohit’s claims and suggested that the 19-year-old is good enough to become an all-format player for India in the future. “Rohit Sharma rightly mentioned that he could be an all-format player for India. So now it’s up to him to work that little bit extra, get his fitness going, get a little tighter as far as the technique is concerned, and prove Rohit right,” said Gavaskar.
