When he fell on Wednesday afternoon, caught and bowled by off-spinner Kounain Quraishi one agonising run short of his ninth First Class century, it was the first time in nearly two months and six competitive innings that Tilak Varma was dismissed.

Since making 53 in the final Twenty20 International against England in Southampton on July 11, the tall left-hander’s scores, all unbeaten, read 6, 60 and 11 (in the T20Is in Harare), and match-winning efforts of 116 and 51 in the Duleep Trophy which helped South Zone make it to the final that they lost on the first innings lead to East Zone at Chepauk on Thursday.

Tilak’s 99, controlled but not with the flair and panache that characterises his batting, was dictated by circumstances. Ishan Kishan, his opposite number, had sealed the destination of the title clash over the first two days. Making the most of his luck at the toss, the little left-hander smacked 270, his highest first-class score, to muscle his team to 708. All South could hope for was to muster some respectability in reply, because that humongous tally was always going to be well beyond them. Tilak therefore put the scoreboard out of his mind, took everything else out of the equation and concentrated on batting time.

Having spent most of the 163 overs – the length of the East first innings – on the field trying to devise ways and means of curbing Kishan and Kumar Kushagra, as well as the lower-order comprising Anukul Roy, Quraishi and Mohammed Shami, Tilak must have been fried mentally. But showing no signs of the fatigue that could have been his biggest stumbling block, the 23-year-old ground out an innings of great character, spanning more than five hours during which he negotiated 210 deliveries with care, assurance and defensive authority until he finally succumbed with a deserved three-figure milestone tantalisingly within grasp.

Vocal and unabashed in his desire to play red-ball cricket for the country, this near-century was further proof that the Hyderabadi wasn’t merely paying lip service while professing his love for Test cricket. Indeed, immediately after the semifinal victory over North Zone in Bengaluru last week, Tilak went public by saying he wanted to play the final before travelling to Delhi for the T20I series against Afghanistan starting on Sunday. The end result wasn’t what he had in mind, but by putting mind over matter and knuckling down to bed in despite the impossibility of the task ahead of him, Tilak once again showcased his immense maturity and added to the already firm reputation he has established as a man of his word.

By his own admission, the endearing young man thought he’d play red-ball cricket for India before being picked for the white-ball outfits. But that’s it they say about the best laid plans of men and mice? Tilak’s maiden international outing came more than three years back, in a T20I against West Indies in Tarouba in August 2023; a month and a half later, he debuted in ODIs, against Bangladesh in the Asia Cup in Colombo. He has only played four further 50-over games, but is an established T20I hand with 59 appearances, averaging 44.45 at a strike-rate of 145.18. Just how highly he is rated by the powers that be is evidenced from the fact that when India chose to move on from the Suryakumar Yadav era despite the Mumbaikar leading the team to the World Cup crown in March, Tilak was named Shreyas Iyer’s deputy.

At some stage in the near future, Tilak will don the captain’s hat in potentially an interim capacity, before he ascends the hot-seat in his own right in due course. Tilak, the captain, is still a work in progress. That much was evident in the triangular ‘A’ series in Dambulla in June, where he led the 50-over side to the title. Tilak got into needless confrontations, which didn’t make for great viewing, but clearly, he didn’t transgress any forbidden lines. He will learn and grow and become more controlled with his aggression. He will become tactically smarter and more astute, he will become better with experience as anyone does in any field. It is clear that the selectors see in him a long-term leader, hence the vice-captaincy of the T20I team, the leadership role with the South Zone outfit and an investment that they hope will bear fruit going forward.

Tilak has done his chances of earning a Test call-up no harm at all. Despite sporadic appearances in domestic First Class cricket because of a packed calendar suffused with T20Is, meaningful and otherwise, the Duleep final is just his 25th appearance for state, zone and India-A since he first turned out for Hyderabad as a 16-year-old against Andhra in December 2018 – nearly eight years have gone by since. He has had his fair share of illnesses and injuries, as much a part and parcel of a professional sportsperson as their kitbag, but he has found a way to bounce back each time.

How committed he is to the longer version is apparent from an impressive average in excess of 55 and a stellar conversion rate – he boasts eight centuries and seven fifties from 38 innings. For someone who is a willing and able risk-taker in T20Is, whether it is at No. 3 where he has brought up both his hundreds or lower down the order, where he was shunted down midway through the World Cup, he is a picture of patience, concentration and correctness when he dons the white flannels and slips effortlessly into a diametrically opposite role.

How India are able to fit Tilak into their red-ball scheme of things will be crucial in the months ahead. In Kishan, he has a worthy rival in the quest for a spot in the Test squad. Sai Sudharsan and Washington Sundar, the former as a top-order batter and the latter as an all-rounder with off-spin as an additional string to his bow, loom as further left-handed competitors in an already left-heavy line-up punctuated by Yashasvi Jaiswal, Devdutt Padikkal, Rishabh Pant and Ravindra Jadeja. There was a time when India struggled to find more than one settled left-hander to break up the tedium of right-handers and offer a different challenge to bowlers of all ilk. Now, there is a distinct slant in the other direction in one of those inexplicables because it isn’t as if left-handers are suddenly being factory-manufactured.

But we digress. How do India’s selectors, captain Shubman Gill and head coach Gautam Gambhir fit Tilak into this logjam? Equally importantly, do they want to do so immediately? For the last year and more, they have invested heavily in Sai Sudharsan, but the Tamil Nadu left-hander will be the first to acknowledge that he hasn’t lived up to expectations. In his injury-enforced absence in Sri Lanka last month, Padikkal made a compelling case to continue at No. 3 with centuries in successive Tests on his comeback after 21 months on the sidelines. There is Dhruv Jurel who has done little wrong at No. 6. Where there is a will, there is a way, of course, but is the will there currently to find a place for Tilak?

India play two Tests in New Zealand, where of late their batting has come a cropper – of late being a bit of a stretch because India’s last Tests in the land of the Kiwi were in early 2020, just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In modern-day cricket, no other country perhaps examines a batter’s technique, character and strength of mind in the five-day game more than New Zealand, with its propensity for seaming tracks exploited admirably by a set of honest, hard-working but also highly skilled fast-bowling group. As if that challenge wasn’t bad enough, India are desperately searching for the full complement of 24 points that will keep their World Test Championship qualification prospects alive. Given that India’s last Test win in that country came in 2009 and they have gone winless in their last six matches, that is a tall order.

But that’s the nature of competitive sport, where nothing comes easy. Where several others might be secretly hoping to be overlooked for a challenge of this magnitude, Tilak will be desperate to get an opportunity to showcase his chops, because that’s how he is wired. He has steadfastly refrained from taking the easy route in his short but already illustrious career, and he is not going to start doing so now.

It’s easy to forget, given how permanent a fixture he is in the T20I setup with the vice-captaincy as an added bonus, that Tilak is still only 23, with an entire lifetime, so to say, ahead of him. The breezy advent of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi might make even 23 look ancient but let’s face it, the 15-year-old is a freak and not the yardstick against which others must be viewed and judged. Tilak’s volume of work in just three years at the highest level is impressive even if almost all his success has come in the high-risk 20-over game. But there is minimal to zero evidence that he won’t be at home in the longer formats, especially in Test cricket where, alongside Gill and Jaiswal, he will be one of the bulwarks of the Indian batting for a long time to come.

With someone else, it might feel prudent to point out the pitfalls of getting carried away and allowing success to go to one’s head. But from whatever little one has seen of, and interacted with, him, Tilak comes across as a grounded, humble, earthy young man driven but not consumed by an inner fire that doesn’t come to everyone. There is a short but dazzling line of fantastic batters to have come out of Hyderabad – the charismatic M.L. Jaisimha, the sinewy Mohammed Azharuddin and the exceptional V.V.S. Laxman, in some ways Azhar’s successor and in many ways not. Tilak doesn’t possess the same wristy elegance as his illustrious right-handed predecessors from the same city, but that doesn’t make him any less of a batter. And just to set the record straight, one is not comparing him with the aforementioned trio of luminaries because, hey, how can you even, at this early stage? Or any stage?

For Tilak, the future is pregnant with exciting possibilities. He needs opportunities, sure, but also quality of opportunity. How soon that comes his way remains to be seen.

Even before November 1999, a host of exceptional wicketkeeper-batters had graced the international scene, not least India’s own Farokh Engineer and the wonderful Andy Flower from Zimbabwe. But from the time a left-hander from Western Australia stormed the Test firmament at the Gabba in Brisbane nearly 27 years back with a bruising 81 on debut, against a shell-shocked Pakistani outfit, wicketkeeper-batters have been looked at in an entirely different vein.

Adam Gilchrist rewrote the dynamics of Test batsmanship. He was a destructive opener in limited-overs cricket long before he played his first Test, and reeled off numerous wondrous knocks, including in the final of the 50-over 2007 World Cup when, with a squash ball for company, he bludgeoned his way to 149 against Mahela Jaywardene’s Sri Lanka in a decisive effort that took Australia to a hat-trick of titles. But it was in the red-ball game that Gilchrist set stall as a pioneer, providing not just meaningful heft to the Australian batting but scoring runs at such a furious clip that opponents were often ducking, unsuccessfully, for cover.

For the most part of his glittering career that encompassed 96 Tests, the left-hander had the luxury of batting behind a grand top six that used different methodologies to subjugate bowling attacks in all parts of the world. The sight of Gilchrist, the destroyer supreme, striding in purposefully at No. 7, was dispiriting or exhilarating, depending on which side of the fence one was. Gilchrist seldom disappointed; when he scored his runs, he did so with not just panache and chutzpah but also with a violent streak that damaged bowling figures as well as egos. How could anyone bat with such unchecked aggression at No. 7? How could someone fuse a no-holds-barred approach with such consistency (as an average of 47.60 at a strike-rate of 81.95 will unequivocally testify to)?

Gold standard

Gilchrist will remain the gold standard among wicketkeeper-batters, the platform from which the likes of Mahendra Singh Dhoni, more than anyone else, launched himself into the stratosphere. Gilchrist’s towering presence kept an entire generation – or more – of Aussie stumper-batters out of international reckoning. India, however, found a judicious balance; while Dhoni’s aggression in front of the stumps and his brilliance behind it precluded a dynamic new force breaking through, India were compelled to find a place, if only as a specialist batter, for Dinesh Karthik, the ebullient little right-hander from Chennai who was more than good enough to hold his own as a batter.

Karthik wasn’t the first Indian gloveman to play as a specialist batter. Nearly four decades before him, Budhi Kunderan donned that role, even opening the batting in England in 1967 alongside designated wicketkeeper Engineer. A couple of decades on, Chandrakant Pandit played as a middle-order bat with Kiran More slotting in as the wicketkeeper. Such was Karthik’s great natural ability – which he didn’t maximise, he will acknowledge – that in the Dhoni era, India fielded him as a full-fledged opener overseas, and with no little success. Alongside Wasim Jaffer, Karthik formed an excellent opening combine in Bangladesh and England in 2007, bringing up his only Test ton across the border and bettering that effort by emerging as India’s highest scorer in England, when they last won a Test series there by a slender 1-0 margin.

Karthik played his last eight Tests down the order, sometimes when Dhoni wasn’t available (including through retirement) and he donned the big gloves, and at others when he played alongside the Jharkhandi as a pure batter. Just one half-century in his last 14 Test innings meant he played the last of his 26 Tests in August 2018; his Test average of 25 was decidedly underwhelming, given his supreme gift as a batter, but that can happen when one is overeager and anxious to not just justify their selection but also state their case for a longer rope.

India now have a profusion of excellent wicketkeeper-batters across formats – Rishabh Pant, of course, tops that chart, especially when it comes to the red-ball variant, but there are a host of others that can’t be ignored. Among them are Sanju Samson and Ishan Kishan, exclusive when it comes to the white-ball version. And Dhruv Jurel, the 25-year-old from Agra whose first Test cap came as a wicketkeeper against England in Rajkot in February 2024 when Pant was out after his horrific road accident of 14 months previously and KS Bharat had played himself out of the XI with poor efforts in the first two Tests in Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam respectively.

The generational talent that Pant is, he kept almost exclusively from the time he made his Test debut in Nottingham in August 2018 and made a stunning 114 in his third appearance at the Oval till his single-car accident in December 2022 when India were suddenly forced to scramble for a replacement. Bharat, from Andhra, won the early nod for the home Tests against Australia in February 2023 and donned the big gloves in the final of the World Test Championship against the same opponents that June. KL Rahul was nominated the first-choice stumper for the two Tests in South Africa towards the end of the year, more to provide stability and class to the lower order in a line-up from which very few had played in South Africa previously. Bharat reclaimed his spot behind the sticks against England at home and played himself out of the XI following scores of 41, 28, 17 and 6 which meant that in seven Tests and 12 innings, he only averaged 20.09, a definite no-no given that the wicketkeeper’s was no longer a single-discipline specialised slot.

Out went the call to Jurel for the third Test in Rajkot with the series finely poised at 1-1, and it was immediately apparent that India had hit upon a gold mine. The right-hander made a poised 46 on debut, and upped the ante in the next match with scores of 90 and 39 not out, the first ensuring that India didn’t end up conceding a massive lead and the second taking them home in a tense run-chase when he and Shubman Gill put on 72 for the unfinished sixth-wicket stand.

This was in February 2024, when one wasn’t sure when Pant would be available for selection though in a characteristic show of gumption and guts, the stocky left-hander was far ahead of the timelines the doctors had tentatively outlined for a possible comeback to competitive cricket. Pant was ready for international cricket in September that year, making a remarkable recovery from a series of potentially life-threatening injuries to smash 109 on his comeback Test in Chennai against Bangladesh. Suddenly, Jurel faced an uncertain future. Despite an impressive start to his Test career, he had to bow before the irrepressible force that Pant was, though it was always on the cards that he could slot in alongside Pant, if not necessarily ahead of him.

In six of his last nine Tests, Jurel has occupied a specialist batter’s position between No. 4 and No. 8 (and that only because Akash Deep was employed as a nightwatchman at the Oval last August). On the three occasions when was the designated wicketkeeper, Pant was unavailable through injury after breaking his right foot in the Manchester Test against England in July last year. Despite the vast array of batting riches at India’s disposal, head coach Gautam Gambhir has identified in Jurel a dependable batting option, and the man from Uttar Pradesh has comprehensively justified that faith with two hundreds and a fifty in those nine Tests and 15 innings.

Jurel’s coming-of-age moment, if it can be called that, transpired in Ahmedabad last October with Pant still to recover from the broken foot. In India’s only innings against West Indies, he uncorked an excellent 125, then followed it up with 44 in the next Test in Delhi. With Pant returning to action against South Africa in November, Jurel continued on as a batter alone though like the rest of his colleagues, he had a series to forget with outings of 14, 13, 0 and 2 in a disastrous 0-2 result that has comprehensively dented India’s hopes of making a third WTC final in four cycles.

But instead of pressing the panic button and looking elsewhere, the decision-makers continued to invest their belief in him and Jurel has responded in style. Towards the end of June, he was a part of the India ‘A’ squad that travelled on the ‘shadow’ tour of Sri Lanka for two unofficial ‘Tests’, ostensibly at the insistence of Gambhir because of his felicity against the turning ball. Jurel warmed up nicely for the Test series to follow with scores of 141 not out, 14 and 53, and it was no surprise that he was picked for the first Test in Galle, when he weighed in with 51 and 7 in a winning cause.

In Colombo last week, Jurel went one better with an unbeaten 115 during which he brought his technical expertise and his mental fortitude into play. He also kept wickets for a while when Pant was recovering from a blow to his right shoulder sustained while batting, and when he went back to the outfield, took a terrific running catch from point to get rid of Lahiru Kumara in Sri Lanka’s first innings. At every stage in every role, he has looked the part, making his presence felt with total commitment and a never-say-die spirit without seeking recourse to the flashy and the flamboyant.

Jurel was chosen for Sri Lanka for his ability to play spin with finesse, and it is hard now to see him being overlooked during the November Test tour of New Zealand where the challenges for batters will be vastly different. At No. 6, behind Pant, he has the technique to tackle the second new ball if that is what he is confronted with. Ravindra Jadeja behind him in the batting order and the possible return of Washington Sundar from injury mean he is a right-handed option around a plethora of left-handers, and while that alone can’t be a qualification, he has shown that he can hold his own against bowling of any kind in any conditions.

India are fortunate that in Jurel, they have a three-in-one cricketer with his entire future ahead of him. As a batting average of 40.68 from 12 Tests proves, he is every bit deserving of the show of confidence. A place in the starting XI in Wellington in November is no more than he deserves; one can rest assured that Jurel will be short on neither preparation nor fire when ‘Play’ is called at the Basin Reserve.