‘Varma ji ke bete ne kamal kardi’ – Mumbai fans elated as Tilak Varma scores unbeaten 84 off 46 against Bangalore

The second day of the 16th Indian T20 League featured a doubleheader. The day’s first game saw the first visiting side win at the opposition’s home ground as Sanju Samson’s Rajasthan outplayed Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s Hyderabad by 72 runs at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad. At the same time, Bangalore hosted Mumbai in the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru for the second game.

Bangalore won the toss and elected to bowl first bringing Mumbai out to bat first. Opening the batting for Mumbai, opening pair of Rohit Sharma and Ishan Kishan could only conjure 11 runs for the opening partnership. Mumbai struggled to keep the scoreboard ticking, but thanks to Tilak Varma’s masterful innings of 84 off 46, the side reached a competitive total of 171 in their quota of 20 overs.

Tilak Varma scored 9 boundaries and 4 sixes in his knock

Varma aside, no other Mumbai batter were up to the mark. Nehal Wadhera scored a quickfire 21 of 13 runs but that was the most help Varma received. He decorated his innings with 9 boundaries and four maximums to give the home side some decent competition.

For Faf du Plessis’s men, Karn Sharma remained the pick of the bowlers as he returned with two wickets for 32 runs in his four overs. Mohammed Siraj, Reece Topley, Akash Deep, Harshal Patel and Michael Bracewell returned with one wicket each. Bangalore thus had to chase 172 from 120 balls to maintain Mumbai’s opener curse. Notably, Mumbai has never won an opener in the Indian T20 League since the 2013 season moving into this one.

Next, in the Indian T20 League 2023, Chennai will look to improve from their first game, where they were massively outplayed by the defending champions Gujarat led by star India allrounder Hardik Pandya. They’ll face Lucknow, led by KL Rahul. Interestingly, they started their Indian T20 League 2023 campaign with an impressive 50-run win over Delhi on Saturday.

Here’s how fans reacted to Tilak Varma’s knock: