Tilak Varma keeps getting asked to prove himself to people who refuse to read the scoreboard. It is a strange punishment for a young man who has spent his short career pulling teams out of fires they did not start. From his very first IPL innings, walking in at 30 for 3 & walking out with 84* from 46 balls, he made rescuing Mumbai Indians a habit.
Since that 2022 debut, no batter in IPL has scored more runs than him while batting at number 4 & 5. Varma sits alone above 1500 runs at those positions, striking at 149.2 (Which is higher than likes of Rinku Singh & David Miller)
And yet the noise never stops. Fans demand instant sixes & forget he is the only player on the planet to have crossed 4000 T20 runs while averaging above 40 & striking at better than 140. That is not a fluke. That is a batsman who has figured out how to survive & then destroy.
The survival part is not metaphorical. In late 2022, batting for India A in Bangladesh, his body simply stopped cooperating. His hands locked around the bat handle & would not open. His muscles went rigid. Doctors explained his blood was eating his muscles, a condition called rhabdomyolysis brought on by pushing a body that refused to rest.
They had to tear his batting gloves away because his fingers would not release. IV needles snapped against his veins. Most cricketers never return from something that violent. Varma walked back into the IPL 5 months later & picked up exactly where he had left off.
That resilience shows up everywhere. In T20 internationals he averages 46 at number 3 with 152 strike rate. When India needed someone to stand firm in Asia Cup 2025 final against Pakistan at 20 for 3, he made 69* at No.4 & carried them home.
He has done the same in First Class cricket(50+ Average & 7 centuries in 23 games) as well as in county cricket for Hampshire, grinding out runs in Division One seam & swing, averaging nearly 79 & proving his love for the long format is not just talk.
He leaves balls alone in English gloom with the same patience he showed waiting months just to move his fingers properly again.
There is something almost cruel about watching a player rescue innings for club & country while constantly hearing whispers about his place in the side. But Tilak does not seem to hear them, or perhaps he has learned to use them as fuel.
He bends, he waits, he absorbs & then he hits back harder than anyone thought possible. The critics will stay loud. The numbers will stay louder.
wake up, brush with fake sensodyne, have bad poha for breakfast, travel to work inhaling high aqi air by private vehicles using costly fuel, eat fake paneer for lunch, drink sewage water, back home avoiding potholes, rash drivers and falling objects, watch photoshoots on news, sleep, pay taxes.
Think of the worst way to die, and India will still manage to shock you with something even more horrific.
An LKG girl was travelling in a dilapidated school bus. The bus jolted. A section of the already rotten floor collapsed. The child, Ananya, slipped through the gap, fell straight under the rear wheel, and was crushed to death on the spot.
This was not some remote village van. This bus belonged to some Mount International School, Aligarh, supposedly a “reputed” private school. A school that allowed children to travel in a death trap.
Look at the condition of the seats and the floor in the images. This very bus was issued a fitness certificate just 11 months ago.
Driving on Indian roads is very easy; you just have to be careful of:
1. Dogs.
2. Cattle.
3. Children.
4. Potholes.
5. Open ditches, sewer lines, manholes.
6. Non-standard speed breakers.
7. Wrong-side drivers.
8. Pedestrians crossing abruptly.
9. Someone suddenly emerging from a divider cut.
10. Drivers abruptly changing lanes.
11. Turning without indicators.
12. Thar, Scorpio, Fortuner, buses, trucks, tractors, irrespective of their driving methods.
13. E-rickshaws and auto-rickshaws stopping/turning anywhere, anytime.
14. Vehicles overtaking from the left.
15. Parked vehicles opening doors without warning.
16. Loose gravel dumped without warning.
17. Temporary barricades placed suddenly in the middle of the road.
18. Uneven resurfacing.
19. VIP vehicles honking behind.
20. Unmarked unfinished flyovers.
That's it.
Novak Djokovic: "Federer and Nadal come from two Western powers. I arrived from Serbia and said out loud that I was going to be number 1. The entire system didn't like that: media, sponsors, tournaments. I felt like an unwanted guess crashing their party. It really hurt me back then. They wanted me to play to their tune — be politically correct, fit into their script. It hurt me so much that I even changed my behavior, hoping they would accept me. In the end, I understood that I needed to stay true to myself and to accept that some people will never like me. And that's fine. I am who I am and I sleep peacefully."
🗣️Novak Djokovic: “I wouldn't change anything in my life. I always did everything the best I knew at that given moment. I made a lot of mistakes, but at least I was authentic and myself. 100 times I’d rather choose to be myself than go along with the system, which is popular these days."
I hope the ICC deals with Pakistan’s threat with as much authority as they did with Bangladesh, who still had some justification in their demand. They do play a money-churning India-Pak game yes but beyond that? They are 4th on the ICC revenue sharing basis that one match and if Mohsin Naqvi, who set the worst precedent first by blackmailing and holding up a game in Asia Cup and then by running away with the Trophy, tries to hold the ICC a hostage, please feel free to call this bluff for once and all please.
Board officials are known for upping the game in their country, and Pakistan ought to know if they are indeed progressing.
Even Bangladesh ought to know if they could have managed the situation better without their advice
SANJAY MANJREKAR ON VIRAT KOHLI TEST RETIREMENT:🚨🗣️
“Well as Joe Root attains new heights in test cricket, my mind goes to Virat Kohli. He has given up Test cricket, and it's sad that in the five years leading up to his retirement, when he was struggling, he didn't put his heart and soul into figuring out why his average in Test cricket was only 31 for those five years.
It would have been fine if Virat Kohli had retired from all formats of cricket, but the fact that he has chosen to continue playing ODI cricket disappoints me even more, because it's the easiest format. The format that truly tests you is Test cricket.
Secondly, because he is so fit, incredibly fit, you feel even more strongly that he could have continued his fight to regain his form.”
My son was 16 when he was hit by a drunk driver. He was in a coma for 3 months. The neurologist sat us down in a sterile conference room and laid out the scans. 'His brain stem is intact,' he said gently. 'But the rest... it’s dark. If he wakes up, he will be a vegetable. He will never speak, never know you, never feed himself. You need to consider long-term care facilities.'
We refused. We brought him home.
We set up a hospital bed in the living room. We played his favorite Led Zeppelin records. We read him comic books. We talked to him for 12 hours a day.
Six months later, I was shaving his face, telling him a bad dad joke.
He didn't just smile. He laughed. A croaky, dry laugh.
Then he looked at me and said, 'That wasn't funny, Dad.'
Today, he is finishing his engineering degree. He walks with a cane, but he walks.
The doctor calls him an 'anomaly.' I call him a fighter. Never let a statistic determine your destiny.
Travis Head like I've been saying the past 2-3 years his output and volume of runs might not be great like a Kohli,Root, Smith,Rohit, Warner,Babar,Williamson but he has made a huge mark in this game with his impactfulness in big series and big pressure games.
Has performed in BGT,Ashes, World Cups, ICC knockouts what else do you need? This man is unquestionably the best all formats batter in this decade. He has made an impression in every format with his attacking mindset. When he scores big Australia win 90-95% of their games.
He is the best thing to have happened to Australian cricket post covid-19. I've never seen any player having this kind of devastating impact in such a short period of time.
Varun Dhawan’s expressions always remind me of that hyper active college theatre guy who genuinely believed he was the best actor. 😅 We never told him he overacted most of the time because we didn’t want to miss the entertainment.
Australia captain Pat Cummins tells players to put away champagne bottles so that Usman Khawaja could celebrate with them.
1.5 years later, Khawaja takes retirement & call his teammates, fans & australians racist as they are of no use to him anymore🤡
> Be Pakistan born Usman Khawaja, migrate to Sydney for greener pastures
> Australia gives your talent a platform, making you the 1st M cricketer to wear the baggy green
> Find love in a Xtian Aussie woman Rachel, marry her, start a beautiful family
> Board respects your privacy when your brother Arsalan Khawaja was arrested for framing a colleague as terrorist , simply because he was jealous of him
> Board let you wear politically coded message in your shoes to support Paleztine
> Your captain Cummins stops Ashes celebration with champagne to be inclusive to your beliefs
> Team gives you multiple opportunities to prove yourself, despite your dry run
> Play golf before a Sheffield Trophy game, injure your hamstring, miss the match, attend Formula One grand Prix during recovery
> use the race/color card when asked questions, claim that you got dropped because your name is not "John Smith"
> Retire with bitterness, asking the board to be more inclusive
> Meanwhile, in your country of birth, Yousuf Youhana, a Xtian, converted to M, much to the ire of his family, under the influence of Tablighi Jamaat which attends board meetings.
> You alone have played 17 more Tests for Aus (87) than the total Tests played by Hindus in Pakistan (Anil Dalpat - 9 and his cousin Danish Kaneria 61)
> There is literally nobody to ask for inclusivity/minority rights in your birth country, make no comment on it
> Stay silent on October 7, but voice out only when your "brothers" face the heat
> Wear no shoes in Ashes test in Aus flag colors post Bondi beach attack on Hannukah
> "All lives are equal, but some lives are more equal than others"