Mumbai Indians have defeated the Gujarat Titans by 99 runs in the IPL clash here on Monday with the help of the maiden century of the star left-handed batsman Tilak Varma.
Tilak scored his first-ever IPL century and turned the match completely in favour of his team.
Spurred by skipper Hardik Pandya’s ‘hard talk’ asking him to get a move-on during a strategic timeout break after he was struggling at 19 off 22 balls.
Fired up by the captain's remarks, he then changed gears and scored 82 in just the next 23 balls, ending up scoring 101 in 45 balls.
Mumbai Indians' 199 for 5 was good enough as Jasprit Bumrah broke his wicket-less streak for five matches with a first-ball dismissal of Sai Sudharsan, and GT never recovered from there to get all out for 100 in 15.5 overs.
Named Player of the Match after his unbeaten 101 off 45 balls, the Mumbai Indians batter, during the post-match presser, said, “Yeah, of course, the first hundred will always be special. And to be honest, it was very important for us. We don’t have much time from here. Every game is important for us.”
He was struggling before yesterday’s game and admitted that his main focus was to spend time on the crease before he could express himself freely in the latter part of the innings.
“In the last five games, I haven’t spent much time in the middle. So I was just thinking that for this game, I want to spend time in the centre of the wicket. If you see the first 20 balls, I was just going ball by ball. I was just batting.”
Also read: IPL 2026: SRH eye home advantage, DC seek consistency
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