It was a routine Wednesday night — inasmuch as a Wednesday night with India playing a Twenty20 International can be routine — until it wasn’t.
The series had been won and lost. In Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli’s comeback to the 20-over scheme of things internationally in India’s final engagements before the T20 World Cup, the hosts had taken a winning 2-0 lead over Afghanistan. Kohli had missed the first game due to personal reasons while Rohit had been dismissed without scoring in both victories, run out in the first match in Mohali and bowled in the next in Indore.
For both, 17 January 2024 was an important date – their last T20I before the World Cup in the Americas. Kohli was dismissed for a first-ball duck, one of four wickets India lost in the PowerPlay. At 22 for four with 93 deliveries remaining, everything pointed to a consolation maiden T20I victory for Afghanistan over their Big Brother.
Until Rohit decided it was time to show everyone who the boss was. With Rinku Singh for company, the captain initiated a rescue act. And more than five years after his previous T20I hundred, the opener added a fifth to his tally, an unbeaten 121 off 69 which, coupled with Rinku’s 69 not out, hauled India to 212 for four.
Afghanistan replied in kind through their top order and finished on 212 for six, sending the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium crowd into raptures and setting up a Super Over. Where the Afghans batted first and made 16. Thanks to Rohit’s two sixes, India reached 15 with one ball to spare. The skipper was at the non-striker’s end after a single off the fifth ball, had a word with the umpire and trudged off. Rinku replaced him in the middle, ostensibly because he was the quicker runner.
Yashasvi Jaiswal managed just one off the last ball, sending the match spiralling to a second Super Over. Rohit Sharma, presumably retired out, a tactical move.
Wait. Forget about presumably. It seems he hadn’t retired out. Because otherwise, how could he have come out to bat in the second Super Over? The rules clearly stipulate that a batter who has been dismissed — in any mode, which includes retired out — is ineligible to bat in any subsequent Super Over. Oh well…
In the immediacy of that game — oh, India won in the second Super Over, with Rohit slamming a six and a four in his team’s 11 for two, and Ravi Bishnoi picking up two wickets in the first three deliveries to derail Afghanistan — head coach Rahul Dravid practically acknowledged that Rohit had retired himself out. “Taking himself out was Ashwin-level thinking. That’s Ash-level thinking,” Dravid, who thinks little of repeating himself when he feels the need to stress a point, told the host broadcaster.
Novelty factor
The Rohit retired out or not drama was laid to rest then and there, especially with Afghanistan opting not to make an issue of it. But the Dravid reference to R. Ashwin, lingered. After all, the off-spinner with novelty and creativity coursing through his veins was the first player to be retired out in the Indian Premier League in April 2022, while batting for Rajasthan Royals against Lucknow Super Giants.
Ashwin had made 28 off 23, two sixes, when he walked off; his team was on 135 for five with ten deliveries left. More than anything else, that decision was influenced by the need to have a younger, faster partner for the marauding Shimron Hetmyer, though that shouldn’t have been a consideration, considering the West Indian left-hander smashed six sixes in his 36-ball 59 not out. RR added 30 in those 10 balls to finish on 165 for six, decisive given that they trooped out winners by three runs.
Further retirements came the next season — Punjab Kings’ Atharva Taide (55 off 42) against Delhi Capitals, and Sai
Sudharsan (43 off 31) for Gujarat Titans in Qualifier 2 against Mumbai Indians, with mixed fortunes. Taide’s ‘dismissal’ triggered a collapse and Punjab went down by 15 runs. Post Sudharsan’s retirement at the end of the 19th over, Gujarat amassed 19 runs in an eventually comfortable 62-run hammering of Mumbai.
Interestingly, neither Ashwin nor Taide and Sudharsan had dawdled during their knocks. Ashwin struck at 121.73 (not flash, agreed), Taide’s strike-rate was 130.95 and Sudharsan had scored even faster, at 138.70 runs per 100 balls faced. Yet, they were called back by their respective decision-making group for tactical reasons. Ashwin was hailed, like he has been for so many things over the last decade and a half, for walking off, Rajasthan were commended for thinking on their feet.
Taide and Sudharsan almost flew under the radar because, well, they are not Ashwin.
But Friday at the sprawling Ekana Cricket Stadium in Lucknow was bereft of commendation, of feel-good, of a pat on the back for the Mumbai Indians management. Not because they went down by 12 runs to hosts Lucknow Super Giants, but because of their move to retire out Tilak Varma, the gifted left-hander who admittedly was struggling to get the ball off the square.
Tilak is a wonderful talent, supremely level-headed for one who is still only 22. He is confident and high on self-belief. A few months back, he approached T20I skipper Suryakumar Yadav during the series in South Africa and asked for the captain’s No. 3 position in the batting order. When Suryakumar obliged, Tilak justified his request with successive hundreds in Centurion and Johannesburg. How about that, people?
In 25 T20Is, Tilak averages 49.93, his strike-rate is a wonderful 155.07. In the IPL, where all his 42 matches since his debut in 2022 have come for five-time former champions Mumbai, his average is a healthy 39.09, his strike-rate a more-than-acceptable 143.14. He is at once one for the present and the future, an explosive bundle of power and aesthetics, a new-age player who is steeped in old-school values.
But this hasn’t been a great season for the left-hander. Before Friday, he had made 70 runs in three innings, striking at 114.75. The usual fluency peeped out only in patches, one of the reasons why Mumbai have struggled to make an impact. In Lucknow, despite his best efforts, he struggled and struggled, limping to 25 off 23 – the target was a testing 204 – when Mumbai finally decided they had had enough. Like he had been when Sudharsan was retired out in 2023, Hardik Pandya was again at the non-striker’s end. Like then, when he was the GT skipper, he was again in a leadership role, helming MI campaign.
Tilak came out after 18.5 overs, with 24 required off seven deliveries. Replacing him, and on strike, was Mitchell
Santner, the New Zealand captain who had done battle against Pandya in the final of the Champions Trophy in Dubai just about four weeks previously.
Santner is primarily a left-arm spinner but he is no mug with the bat. He averages 26 in Tests and has struck 107 sixes in 217 T20s, boasting a strike-rate of 130.35. Not Tilak level, true, but certainly better than the level Tilak displayed on the night. It was a move that didn’t come off, because Santner faced just two of the last seven deliveries. And in that is a tale in itself.
The Kiwi skipper bunted two runs off his first ball, then watched as Pandya smashed the first ball of the last over, from
Avesh Khan, over cover for six. Now 16 off 5. The next ball produced a couple – 14 off 4. Jangle, jangle. Pandya tonked the next ball to deep square-leg but did not take the single. He sent Santner back, believing that if anyone could get them over the line, it was him. That didn’t quite work out. Just one run off the next three deliveries meant Mumbai slumped to their third loss in four matches.
If Santner was to be denied the strike in the last over because of Pandya’s belief in himself more than his partner, then why was he summoned in the first place? And if all that Pandya’s partner had to do was run between the wickets, couldn’t Tilak have managed that? After all, while the big strokes were proving elusive, that shouldn’t be a deterrent to pace over the 22 yards, correct?
Pandya and head coach Mahela Jayawardene have received plenty of flak for retiring Tilak out. After all, the ends justify the means, and because Mumbai ended up on the losing side, this was a move open to criticism. Had Pandya (and/or
Santner) pulled the fat out of the fire, it would have been eulogised and celebrated as a masterstroke, such is the wisdom hindsight confers on us. Subsequent damage control has surfaced in the form of ‘sources’ revealing that Tilak had a ‘finger niggle’ (a new one that) in his left hand, which precipitated his exit from the middle. If that was the case, why wasn’t he retired out a little earlier? Why was Santner not given the luxury of a few more deliveries? Why did Mumbai leave it so late before deciding that it wasn’t going to be Tilak’s night? And if they had chosen to believe in him until 18.5 overs, maybe they could have just stuck with him, come what may?
These are questions to which there will be no satisfactory answers, depending on perspective. Retiring out is a tactical, strategic, legal option but more than in most things, prudence and emotion jostle for pre-eminence in this instance. Feel for Tilak, sure, but don’t throw Pandya and Jayawardene under the bus. After all, this is the world of T20 cricket, where emotional rollercoasters are an everyday guarantee.
Published – April 06, 2025 11:29 pm IST