Mahela Jayawardene, the head coach of the Mumbai Indians, has once again justified his choice to have Tilak Varma injured out of the Indian Premier League (IPL) match against the Lucknow Super Giants.

The team management asked Varma, who was having trouble putting the ball away and had only scored 25 from 23 balls, to return to the dugout and send Mitchell Santner to blast a few big ones because the Mumbai Indians needed quick runs in their chase of 204 at the Ekana Stadium in Lucknow.

Mumbai lost the game by 12 runs, and the club management’s decision caused a stir on social media, with several former Indian players denouncing it as a mistake by MI. This will affect the players’ morale.

Ahead of their next match against Royal Challengers Bengaluru, however, Jayawardene justified his choice on Monday, claiming that contemporary cricket is more tactical.

“I am aware that everyone is to blame for the situation. The game nowadays, however, is much more tactical. In order to match certain bowling lineups and other factors, we often switch up our hitting lineups. Jayawardene said at the pre-match news conference before to the RCB match, “I don’t see how different that is.”

According to Jayawardene, the opposition was bowling effectively to Tilak Varma, who was having trouble hitting big ones. He thus chose to send Santner in.

“As a batter, I’ve experienced situations where you bat and then find it difficult to get through, and then they bowl well to you; it’s a combination of those two things.”

In difficult circumstances, such as when we lost wickets early, he (Tilak Varma) batted well for us in the previous three games. He has formed those partnerships and helped us get to the places we need to be. That’s his contribution to the game and his role with that expertise, and I still appreciate it,” he said.

Television cameras filmed India T20 captain Suryakumar Yadav’s astonished response to Jayawardene’s decision, which is a whole different story.