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By:

Waleed Hussain

4 March 2025 at 8:04:30 pm

Tilak Varma: The Calm in the Chaos

There are moments in T20 cricket when a match appears to slip beyond reach. For India, one of the most encouraging developments in recent years has been the emergence of a young left-hander who seems increasingly comfortable in precisely these circumstances. His name is Tilak Varma. Varma offered another compelling demonstration of his value, striking an unbeaten 51 off 25 balls against New Zealand in Christchurch. India had slumped to 112 for six while chasing 181, with Mitchell Santner...

Tilak Varma: The Calm in the Chaos

There are moments in T20 cricket when a match appears to slip beyond reach. For India, one of the most encouraging developments in recent years has been the emergence of a young left-hander who seems increasingly comfortable in precisely these circumstances. His name is Tilak Varma. Varma offered another compelling demonstration of his value, striking an unbeaten 51 off 25 balls against New Zealand in Christchurch. India had slumped to 112 for six while chasing 181, with Mitchell Santner threatening to derail the innings. Varma responded with a match-turning partnership alongside Nitish Kumar Reddy, adding 69 runs from just 30 balls to steer India to a four-wicket victory. His late assault transformed a precarious chase into another memorable Indian win. Varma’s greatest contribution to the Indian T20 side may lie in his ability to bring order to chaos. India have never lacked explosive batters. The challenge, however, is ensuring that aggression does not become recklessness and that a promising start does not collapse under pressure. Varma offers a different kind of assurance. He can attack without losing sight of the situation, rebuild after early wickets and accelerate when the game demands it. His left-handed presence also gives India a valuable tactical dimension, disrupting bowling plans and forcing captains to reconsider their match-ups. The Christchurch innings illustrated these qualities perfectly. Such performances are what distinguish a talented batter from a genuine match-winner. The foundations of Varma’s reputation were laid in South Africa in November 2024. Given the opportunity to bat at No. 3, he responded with an unbeaten 107 off 56 balls at Centurion, helping India post 219 for six and secure a crucial victory. He followed that performance with another century, scoring 120 in the next match, establishing himself as a batter capable of dominating quality international bowling. They demonstrated that Varma could assume responsibility at a pivotal position rather than remain confined to the role of a supporting batter. His willingness to take ownership of the No. 3 position was particularly significant for a team continually searching for the right balance between stability and aggression. In the 2025 Asia Cup final against Pakistan, Varma’s unbeaten 69 guided India through a tense chase after an uncertain start. Modern T20 cricket increasingly demands players who can fulfil multiple roles within a single innings. Varma has demonstrated the ingredients required for that responsibility. His left-handed batting adds variety to India’s predominantly right-handed combinations, while his ability to play spin and pace makes him a flexible option across different conditions. The long-term implications are substantial. India need not depend exclusively on one or two established superstars to rescue difficult matches. A reliable Varma in the middle order could give the team greater freedom to attack early, knowing that someone capable of rebuilding remains available when wickets fall. There is, of course, a distinction between potential and sustained greatness. International cricket will test Varma against opponents who study his strengths, exploit his weaknesses and devise plans specifically to contain him. Consistency, fitness, decision-making under pressure and the ability to recover from prolonged lean patches will determine whether he becomes a dependable international fixture or one of India’s defining T20 batters. The challenge is to nurture his development without burdening him with unrealistic expectations. Every promising young cricketer does not need to be labelled the next superstar. Varma deserves the opportunity to develop his own identity. There is something particularly inspiring about Varma’s journey. His rise from Hyderabad, supported during his formative years by a coach who helped him overcome financial constraints, reflects the role that opportunity, sacrifice and perseverance can play in sporting success. But inspiration alone does not win international matches. Performance does. And Varma is increasingly providing the evidence to support the belief surrounding him. For Indian cricket, Tilak Varma represents something more enduring than a succession of memorable innings: the possibility of a middle order built around intelligent aggression and emotional resilience. The next chapter of his career will determine just how far that promise carries him. Yet the signs are encouraging. India may have discovered a batter who can do more than entertain, more than accumulate runs and more than rescue the occasional match. They may have found a cricketer capable of becoming one of the defining pillars of their T20 future. (The writer is a senior journalist based in Mumbai. Views personal.)

Understanding Tool Kits that Pose Threat to Security

Writer: Prashant Hamine
Prashant Hamine
Aug 31
3 min read

Whatever is happening in India ever since Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister in 2014, was actually in the works much before February 2002, it is a Toolkit that is a combination of Conspiracies, Strategies, Toolkit's, Cookbooks, Reports, Mind Control Games, and Weaponising nonviolence and Regime Degradation operations.


What is happening now in India is a deadly combination of all these.


The first tool kit of regime change is derived from the 1823 US President James Monore's annual address to the Congress, which now is called the Monroe Doctrine.


Ever since then the US has been engineering regime change and forging regional alliances that suit its global hegemonistic attitudes.


In its ongoing war with Iran, it has shown its European allies that it can do away with regional alliances like NATO.


It has already made the UN defunct, through its unilateral invasions like those in Venezuela or staking claim to Greenland.


The Monroe Doctrine is the best known U.S. policy toward the Western Hemisphere, Colonization & Puppet regimes. The doctrine is derived from a routine annual message delivered to Congress by President James Monroe in December 1823. The doctrine warned European nations that the United States would not tolerate further colonization or puppet monarchs.


What the US has done since then is the exact opposite of the Monroe doctrine.


The second toolkit strategy is the 1966 Richard Cloward & Francis Fox Piven's - Cloward-Piven strategy.


It is a strategy to undermine elected governments.


The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. The strategy aims to utilize "militant anti-poverty groups" to facilitate a "political crisis" by overloading the welfare system via an increase in welfare claims, forcing the creation of a system of guaranteed minimum income and "redistributing income through the federal government."


Freebies promising free cash doles, free power, free ration, free travel etc are prime examples of how to make people lazy, unproductive and dependent on free government doles.


It’s meant to make people addicted to freebies, ensure more unproductive revenue outflow than revenue income, forcing governments to tax more and fall in a debt trap of its own making, thanks to its freebie culture.


The third tool kit of unleashing Anarchy in any country that is to be subverted is the 1971 The Anarchist Cookbook written by William Powell.


The Anarchist Cookbook, first published in 1971, is a book containing instructions for the manufacture of explosives, rudimentary telecommunications phreaking devices, and related weapons, as well as instructions for the home manufacture of illicit drugs, including LSD


The fourth tool kit is to regime degradation or discrediting a democratically elected government and its institutions of governance.


This tool kit that is being played out now through the CJP protest is heavily drawn from Gene Sharp's 1973 book of 198 methods of nonviolent actions.


The attempts to normalise foul, filthy language aimed at PM Modi and indecent behaviour during the recent protest by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), rejecting Supreme Court orders on registering FIRs on habitual offenders, questioning the need for seeking prior permission for staging a protest or making fun of the Prime Ministers mannerisms and language are all aimed at discrediting and undermining the democratic institutions and those in positions of power.


What critics and supporters of this new attempt to normalize the foul, filthy language and indecent behaviour, fail to understand is that one day they themselves might well be paid in the same coin by the very same Gen Z whose actions they tried to defend.


Second act of boycott in Gene Sharp's non-cooperation theory is to boycott the elections.


The constant harping and raising doubts over the election machinery and the process is aimed at creating doubts in the minds of people, ultimately making them believe in a lie and provoking them to extreme measures of boycotting the elections itself.


The fifth tool kit still in use is based on the 1974 Henry Kissinger's Report on Population & National Security. Also euphemistically called as Kissinger's Genocide Plan.


Kissinger advocated Depopulation means like wars, genocide, pandemics and subverting agriculture through genetically modified crops through his 1974 report.


(The writer is a senior journalist based in Mumbai.)

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