‘Hyderabadi boys’ Tilak Varma and Nitish Kumar Reddy broke the Indian record for the highest partnership for the seventh wicket in a successful T20I run-chase during the second T20I against New Zealand in Christchurch. The duo scored 69 runs together to secure a thrilling last-over run-chase, going past the 59 runs scored by Yusuf Pathan and Irfan Pathan against Sri Lanka in Colombo in 2009.
Among full-member nations, this was the joint-second-highest partnership for the seventh wicket in a successful chase, only behind Afif Hossain and Mosaddek Hossain’s 82 for Bangladesh against Zimbabwe in 2019.
The duo joined hands at a difficult time for India, with the score at 112/6 in 14.5 overs, and the team needing 69 runs off 31 balls. Tilak was not
in a good moment here, batting at 10 (9), thanks to a choke by New Zealand’s spinners. But as the spin overs concluded, both finishers showed their best form, hitting at a joint strike rate of over 200 to win the game.
“At that stage, I was just thinking about playing till the end,” Tilak said after the match. “Just before the game, I was talking with the bread coach and the batting coach – we believed that we could win the game if we took it till the deep, we had the belief in us. I was saying to Naman that we’ll have to stay till the end, push hard when the spinners were bowing. The pitch was on the slower side, unfortunately Naman got out, else we would have finished the game in the 19th over. Then we had the Hyderabadi boys together – the plan was that we wanted to show intent, push into gaps and run hard. I think we did that, we got some crucial 8-10 runs. We knew we could hit the faster bowlers for boundaries, we knew that we could hit the gaps,” he added.
