Tilak Varma
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The early years
Till 2025 January
Tanishq Vaddi, Feb 2, 2025: The Indian Express
Tilak Varma's father Namboori Nagaraju, youth coach Salam Bayash and Hyderabad head coach Vineet Saxena trace the early days of India cricketer.
A electrician, Namboori Nagaraju, recalls listening to cricket commentary on radio when he was in college. Never did he expect, though, that a day would come when he would be in an airport watching his son Tilak Varma hitting the winning runs for India.
While it was a dream come true moment, the journey was not as straightforward. Speaking to The Indian Express, Nagaraju says he is thankful to god that he didn’t have any health issues in his strenuous journey to make Tilak the cricketer he is today. It was the finances that took their toll on the family. Apart from his regular job, Nagaraju also did part-time jobs like repairing fans to earn some petty amounts to make ends meet every month.
“I used to work till 12 at night and wake up at 3:30-4 in the morning. Sometimes it would become 1am and on a few occasions, there is no sleep at all. Because once you have decided to do it there is no other way,” said Nagaraju. “Sometimes you think about those memories; I wonder how we even did it.”
Nagaraju wanted both his sons Tilak and Tarun Varma to pursue medicine, however, both wanted to aspire to sport. The younger one wanted to be a cricketer while the older one to wanted become a badminton player. “Tilak told me if I study medicine I will be known in Hyderabad but if I play sports will get known at the world level. That sentence touched my heart.”
The destination was fixed but the family needed someone to steer them through the journey. Enter the coach Salam Bayash.
Bayash saw the same passion, obsession and madness for cricket from Tilak as his younger self and took him under the wing. However, he was surprised when a young Tilak, without any professional training, hit a hundred against a private academy team from Hyderabad during a practice match. It convinced Bayash of Tilak’s talent and he immediately requested his parents to let the kid invest more time in practice.
Tilak’s coaching was rigorous. He had to travel from Barkas to Lingampally (40 kms) every day and manage his academics too. At practice, Bayash didn’t tolerate any complacency from Tilak either.
“I used to scold him a lot,” Bayash recalls. In training, Tilak was exposed to fiery 130-140 KPH deliveries from a very young age. “These days many have started using sidearms (the equipment used for throwing balls at batsmen) but we started making him face deliveries against Sidearms in 2014 itself.”
However, despite all that Tilak could not make the cut for the U-14 Hyderabad team for the first time. Bayash stepped in to guide the youngster. “I made sure he was not demotivated then as you know how people of that age are if they don’t get selected. They get disturbed and turn negative. We kept telling him it was only a matter of 50-100 runs and that we could do it the next time.”
Bayash increased Tilak’s practice from four hours to five. “He went on to score about 1360 runs the following year,” Bayash recalls. Tilak was selected and made the captain of the Hyderabad U-14 side in 2015/16.
Not only was Bayash a hard taskmaster but also understood what Tilak needed to get motivated. Through his connections at the Hyderabad Cricket Association, he had Tilak work as one of the ball boys during an IPL game in Hyderabad against Chennai Super Kings. The coach knew this was Tilak’s great opportunity to meet his idol: Suresh Raina.
“The day he met Raina after the game he went back home and started doing drills at midnight,” Bayash laughs. “His parents called me at night to say that ‘you have helped him to meet his idol, now he will double his effort to reach his goals’. He (Tilak) changed after that,” Bayash says.
Everything Tilak turned touched into gold until he went unsold in the IPL auction. “He did not have a great Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy and he didn’t get picked.”
However, unlike the U-14 incident when Bayash had gently motivated Tilak, this time he gave him a dressing down, reminding him of his average performance at SMAT.
“You got a 60 and 40 and you were expecting to play IPL? You should stop thinking like that, stop comparing yourself to peers. If you score runs you will get selected before everyone.”
And it worked as Tilak went on to pile runs in the domestic calendar in white-ball cricket and caught the eye of Mumbai Indians in trials. He was picked for 1.7 crores by Mumbai for 2022 IPL.
The father remembers that moment when their life changed. “We were all sitting in front of the TV that day. First it was SRH. then Chennai and Mumbai came and bought him. The moment it crossed 1 crore we were over the moon,” Naagaraju recalls.
It wasn’t all one-way street between Tilak and his coach. The moment of paying gurudakshina would arrive soon when Bayash was hit by COVID-19 and his health plunged.
“The doctor told us the chances are looking slim. Tilak used to come to the hospital every day.” Despite his ill health, the mentor would scold Tilak and ask him to concentrate on his practice instead of attending to him. “He stopped coming to me and just sat outside the room I was in ICU for 15 days and could see his love and respect for me at the time. He used to talk to the doctors and console my wife that he will take care of things.”
Despite success still grounded
Despite all the success Tilak has seen till today he still has the same level of respect to his coaches and continues to be humble towards their advice. Hyderabad Head Coach Vineet Saxena too lauds these features of Tilak. “He has a great work ethic and is very keen to learn, he is a good listener and he is always open to ideas.”
Though Tilak has sparkled in the T20I format for India, Saxena believes Tilak can deliver in all the formats of the game. “ I have worked with him in all the formats at domestic cricket. The first time I saw him was in the Duleep Trophy where he got a very good 100 in one of the games. I think he has the temperament for the longer version; he batted patiently and has the technique to counter both spin and the pace. He came back in the SMAT (For Hyderabad) after scoring those two hundreds in South Africa, so he did pretty well in the T20 also, so his game in the T20 is sorted.”
Saxena does believe that Tilak’s game in 50-overs needs a bit of fine-tuning in particular with the pacing of innings. “It’s just a matter of getting experience at the highest level.”
