With few days to go for T20 World Cup 2026, India will be breathing a sigh of relief after Tilak Varma's strong return to action during the warm-up game between India A and USA at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai on Monday (February 2). Put into bat on a good batting surface, India A got off to a flier through openers Narayan Jagadeesan and Priyansh Arya.
Arya fell after a fiery cameo but Jagadeesan didn't waste his start and batted deep into the innings. The main focus was, however, going to be on Varma for obvious reasons. The left-hander has been a crucial part of India's T20I setup and its never easy to come back from the kind of injury that Varma had suffered.
Varma batted fluently during his 24-ball 38 with three fours and two big sixes in his knock. The southpaw showed no signs of discomfort and was seen moving freely while running between the wickets. All these signs point at a definite return to India's XI for their first World Cup match against USA on February 7.
While Varma looked set for a big score, he was dismissed by a sharp bouncer which he gloved through to the wicketkeeper Monank Patel. However, Varma had stitched a superb partnership with Jagadeesan by then. The Tamil Nadu man went berserk and paced his innings in fine fashion to bring up a 49-ball century.
At the time of publishing this article, he had just gotten to a ton and understandably, there were a lot of emotions running through. It might only be a warm-up game but Jagadeesan was showing that there are more options for wicket-keeper bats from an Indian team's point of view.
