Tilak Verma’s slow batting became a cause of troubleImage Credit source: Getty Images
Team India’s tour of Ireland and England has not been good at all so far. Team India lost both the matches of the T20 series against Ireland, while the first match against England remained inconclusive. There is an uproar over Vaibhav Suryavanshi not being given a chance. Captain Shreyas Iyer and coach Gautam Gambhir are everyone’s target. There is pressure on them to drop some of those players for glory. In this, Sanju Samson is being discussed the most, who is failing in the series. But apart from Samson, Tilak Verma is one such batsman whose performance remains a cause for concern.
Sluggish batting on Ireland-England
On the current tour of Team India Tilak Verma The performance has been very mixed. He has got a chance to play in all three T20 matches on this tour, in which he has a half-century to his name. In the other two innings he could only score less than 20 runs. But what is more troubling than the runs is Tilak Verma’s failure to score runs quickly. In the first T20 against Ireland, he could score the highest score of 19 runs in 21 balls and in the second T20 he could score the highest of 55 runs in 46 balls.
This trend continued against England also, where he could score only 13 runs in 13 balls. In both the matches of the Ireland series, he had to come out to bat after losing 3 wickets in the powerplay, where the team’s condition was bad. But against England in Chester-le-Street, he came out to bat in the 9th over, when Team India had scored 88 runs at a run rate of more than 10.50. But despite this he could not maintain this pace. He was out while batting at a strike rate of only 100.
Continued ups and downs in Tilak’s performance
But this is not the first time that Tilak’s batting is under question, rather his batting graph from 2024 seems to be in flux. He has been seen struggling especially in scoring runs quickly. Statistics show that in 2024, Tilak Verma had scored 1166 runs in T20 cricket at a strike rate of around 160 but it had fallen to 132 in 2025, where he scored 910 runs.
However, there has been some jump in it in 2026 and till now he has scored 653 runs in 26 innings at a strike rate of around 142. But the other aspect of this is that his increased strike rate is only on the basis of 7-8 innings, whereas in most of the matches he has been hovering between the strike rate of 120 to 125 and this is the reason for the problem.
Why is this demonstration of Tilak a cause of trouble?
This performance of Tilak is also disturbing because he bats at number five position, where his responsibility is often to increase the pace of runs and attack. He played this role well in the T20 World Cup this year and played a big role in the victory with short but quick innings in the last matches including the final.
But all those innings came in favorable conditions for batting. The current situation is that if the pitch becomes even a little difficult or the spinners come to bowl, Tilak Verma is seen getting stuck and it becomes difficult for him to score runs. Recently it has been seen that often as soon as Tilak comes to bat, teams use spinners in the attack and its effect is visible on the run rate.
This decision of Team India is also the reason
This condition of the player with his middle order-finisher role is not a good sign for Team India. But the decision of the Indian team management/selectors themselves is also responsible for the current situation, who directly gave the responsibility of vice-captain to Tilak. In such a situation, it does not seem very easy to drop him now. This decision is also troublesome because the selectors have ignored captain Rajat Patidar, who has won the IPL title in two consecutive seasons, who has the ability to break the maze of spinners. Now Team India can only pray that Tilak’s bat works in this series.
