India, April 22 -- Suddenly, Mumbai Indians are unrecognisable from the stuttering team which lost four of its first five matches. The five-time champions are known to be slow starters who gather pace gradually, and it could be the same story this season as well.

The catalyst for the change this time is their young batter Tilak Varma, who hammered a brilliant, match-winning hundred (101*-45 balls) against Gujarat Titans on Monday.

Varma himself had struggled for form with a sequence of 20, 0, 14, 1 and 8 in his first five outings. Against GT with MI again in the doldrums at 44/3, the left-hander too had laboured to 19 off 22 balls before he produced one of the most stunning batting accelerations.

He brought up his maiden IPL hundred in...