SportsPosted at: Oct 24 2026 8:57PM


Tilak credits Gambhir, Kotak for belief after guiding India to victory

New Delhi, Oct 24 (UNI) Tilak Varma said conversations with India head coach Gautam Gambhir and batting coach Sitanshu Kotak gave him the confidence to finish the job after his unbeaten half-century helped India edge past New Zealand by four wickets in the thrilling second T20I in Christchurch on Saturday.

India were struggling at 70 for 5 in the 11th over while chasing 181 on [against] used pitch that offered assistance to spinners Mitchell Santner and Michael Bracewell. Tilak stayed focused on batting through the innings, eventually scoring an unbeaten 51 off 26 balls to earn the Player-of-the-Match award.

He has now remained unbeaten in 26 successful T20 chases, with India winning every one of those matches.

“At that stage I was just thinking about playing till the end,” Tilak said after the match. “Just before today's game, I was talking with coach Gautam sir and Sitanshu Kotak sir, and they said one thing that we all believe and the whole India believes in you. If you stay till the end, then you will win, you'll win the game for us.

“That was in my mind and I wanted to take the game as deep as possible. At the end of the day, I have done what everyone believed. So I'm really proud of myself.”

Tilak added 42 runs off 25 balls with Naman Dhir, who scored [against] fluent 31 off 17 deliveries, including three sixes and [against] four. After Dhir's dismissal, Tilak was joined by fellow Hyderabad batter Nitish Kumar Reddy, and the pair put on an unbeaten 69 off just 30 balls, India's highest seventh-wicket partnership in men's T20Is.

“I was telling Naman that we'll stay till the end and especially we can go slightly slower today compared to last game," Tilak said. "I was telling Naman that we'll push hard in running between the wickets when spinners were bowling. So that's what our plan was. We have pushed hard when they were bowling, and unfortunately Naman got out in the last over of Mitchell Santner. Otherwise, I think we would have finished the game in 18th over. So yeah, the credit goes to Naman as well, the way he batted.

“But after that, Hyderabadi boys were in the play today, Nitish Reddy and myself, and we are really happy that we finished the game,” he added.

India needed 46 runs from the final three overs but backed themselves to attack New Zealand's fast bowlers. Tilak said the runs they picked up through hard running against the spinners were equally important.

“Definitely there was [against] plan like that [to target the fast bowlers], but we thought that we'll put that intent. When they bowl in our arc, we'll go [for big shots]. Otherwise we wanted to just push it in the gaps and run hard. I think we got four to five twos against spinners, those eight-ten runs were really crucial. So I think that we played smartly there and later on we knew that we could hit [against] the fast bowlers.
“We needed that pace in this huge ground, so we were waiting for that, and we finished off in style.”

Both teams will now head to Wellington for the third game on October 27, with New Zealand facing [against] must-win situation to stay alive in the five-match T20I series.
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