Skipper Hardik Pandya lauds debutant Tilak Varma for impressive display in India’s loss to WI

Tarouba [Trinidad and Tobago]: Skipper Hardik Pandya heaped praise on debutant Tilak Varma for his exceptional display in India’s first T20I loss against West Indies.

India’s opening order struggle on a tricky surface made it hard for them to stay on the pitch. Tilak Varma then stepped on the crease to keep the visitors’ innings from falling apart.

It just took him a single ball to understand the nature of the pitch, on his next two deliveries he sent the ball flying into the stands. Romario Shepherd and Jason Holder were the two bowlers who ended up facing his wrath. In the end, Shepherd got better of the batter and drew the curtain on Tilak’s night for a score of 39(22).

Hardik was impressed with Tilak’s swagger and in the post-match presentation he said, “Very pleasing to see the way he started his innings. Not a bad way to start your international cricket with a couple of sixes. There’s confidence and the fearlessness they have. They are going to do wonders for India.”

During Tilak and Suryakumar Yadav’s time on the crease, both batters managed to steady the ship momentarily. After the fall of their stand, India still fancied their chances with Sanju Samson and Pandya keeping India in the chase. Yet the WI bowlers managed to restrict India.

Hardik said that India were in control of the game for most of the time but a few errors led to their downfall.

“We were right in the chase and quite comfortable there. We made some errors which cost us the game which is fine. A young team will make mistakes. We will grow together.

Throughout the game, we were in control of the game which was the positive in this game. Good four games coming ahead. In T20 cricket, if you lose wickets, it becomes difficult to chase down any total, that’s exactly what happened.

A couple of hits can change the momentum towards you. When we lost a couple of wickets, that halted our chase,” Hardik added.

Finally, when Hardik was quizzed about the combination of the bowlers he stated that the set-up they decided to use felt right.

“It (playing three spinners) was more to do with the conditions. We would like to give opportunities to the two wristies (Kuldeep and Chahal) to play together. Axar adds a very good component in his batting as well. We felt that was the right combination.

Mukesh (Kumar) – to have these two weeks which he has had in West Indies – where he made debuts in all three formats is really good. Genuinely, he’s a nice guy. He has a very good heart, and wants to contribute for the team. He bowled a couple of overs back to back and that was fantastic,” Hardk signed off.

Coming to the match, West Indies won the toss and for a change, they decided to bat first. The hosts managed to put up a total of 149-6.

India struggled throughout the chase as wickets kept falling at regular intervals, which made it hard for them to chase down the target of 150.

India will square off against West Indies in the second T20I on Sunday.