An architect before embarking on a full-time career in cricket, Varun Chakravarthy is steadily graduating as one of the architects of India’s success in cricket’s shortest format.
Varun’s international journey had a rough start with only two wickets from his first six T20Is. However, last year’s IPL was his breakthrough season in the competition as he finished as the second-highest wicket-taker (21 scalps from 15 games) to play a leading role in Kolkata Knight Riders’ third title.
Since then, the leg-spinner has taken as many as 20 wickets from his next eight T20I appearances after a comeback into the India team, against Bangladesh last October.
Strikingly, he hasn’t really looked out of sorts even in conditions that aren’t too spin-friendly. Taking 10 wickets in the three-match series in South Africa last
November is one instance, while on an Eden Gardens pitch that had firm bounce with a bit of movement for the quicks, his 3/23 was paramount to India’s comfortable seven-wicket win in the series opener against England on Wednesday.
So, what exactly has the 33-year-old changed in his bowling that enables him to perform such consistently in a format that’s cruel to bowlers most of the time?
“Varun has an attacking mindset now. That aside, he’s varying the length when there’s not much offering from the wicket.
“If the wicket is hard, he’s working on the bounce. Yesterday (Wednesday), there was no sideways deviation, so he wasn’t working on sidespin. He worked more on the overspin, which helps when there’s extra bounce in the wicket, something he had done in South Africa too,” Varun’s coach AC Prathiban, a former Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry off-spinner, told The Telegraph from Chennai on Thursday.
Creating confusion in the batter’s mind is another aspect of Varun 2.0. “Yes, by creating angles and a decent amount of deviation,” Prathiban, also the batting coach of UP Warriorz in the WPL (Women’s Premier League), acknowledged.
“He’s bowling an ideal speed on these wickets. All these are things he understands well and of course, Calcutta has been his home ground for the past few years, thanks to the IPL.”
Alongside overspin and drifting the ball into the batsman, Varun now has a few more arsenal in his armoury. “Earlier, he used to bowl mainly googlies and the carrom ball. At present, he’s relying more not just on googlies, but on leg-spin as well, and he can bowl two types of leg-spin. And the flipper too with a lot more control,” Prathiban said.
“The conventional leg-spin aside, he’s bowling the other leg-spin with a
scrambled seam that helps the ball skid off the pitch, making matters tougher for batsmen. Besides, he’s clear now about what to bowl to which batter.”
For sure India can contemplate a robust defence of their title in next year’s T20 World Cup if Varun keeps performing.