Varun Chakravarthy has played through pain for a good part of this IPL. First, a finger injury ruled him out of two games earlier in the competition, then a hairline fracture in his left foot sidelined him from the all-important clash against Royal Challengers Bengaluru in Raipur, which the Kolkata Knight Riders lost.
Since sustaining the foot injury, Varun featured in three matches and went wicketless in each of them. But, despite going wicketless, Varun has maintained an economy rate that’s quite decent from today’s T20 perspective.
Barring his final over in last Saturday’s game against Gujarat Titans, where Varun leaked 22 runs, the spinner hasn’t been easy to put away by rival batters in spite of not being at his fittest.
“He’s obviously playing through a bit of pain at the moment, which just shows how brave he is, how much he wants to be here to contribute for KKR, and he’s still bowling beautifully,” assistant coach Shane Watson said after their four-wicket win over Mumbai on Wednesday.
Sunil Narine, whose bowling continues to remain a mystery even after over 200 appearances for the franchise, has helped take some pressure off Varun, whose commitment has earned him accolades from the side.
Narine isn’t KKR’s highest wicket-taker this season. With 14 scalps so far, he’s second to young pacer Kartik Tyagi (18 wickets). But what stands out is Narine’s economy rate of 6.40 even after bowling on some of the surfaces that were loaded in favour of the batters.
And on pitches that have been a little tricky with some purchase for bowlers, even the internationally established batsmen have appeared almost clueless before the distinguished off-spinner. His variations on Wednesday at the Eden had simply bottled up both Mumbai captain Hardik Pandya and Tilak Varma.
“It comes with hard work, planning about what’s in front of you and not trying to overthink. If you overthink things, it gets a bit tougher than it normally is,” Narine had said following his Man-of-the-Match-winning performance against the Titans last week.
Given their pace resources that are not illustrious and experienced enough — Matheesha Pathirana too is taking time to recover from his injury — it was up to Varun and Narine to lead the bowling attack and bail KKR out. Sharing 24 wickets among themselves so far this season, the spin duo have had a bigger impact in terms of the economy rate.
Saurabh effort
Saurabh Dubey, the left-arm quick from Vidarbha, also deserves some credit.
Saurabh struck twice with the scalps of India heavyweights Rohit Sharma and Suryakumar Yadav to also have his share of contribution in the Knights’ victory
over Mumbai.
“He (Saurabh) has been working very hard at the nets and is a calm guy,” KKR bowling coach Tim Southee said at the Knight Golf at Tollygunge Club on Thursday. “One thing we noticed straightaway was... He’s keen to improve his game and learn.”