Not very long ago, mystery spinner felt he may not be able to play for India again
CHENNAI: Ravichandran Ashwin said a few days ago on his YouTube channel that the ongoing T20I series would be a “crucial battle between England and Varun Chakravarthy“.
“The result will be based on how England tackle Varun. If they struggle while facing Varun and Ravi Bishnoi, the game is done. If they encounter Varun well, the series will be tight,” Ashwin opined. The veteran spinner’s assessment, spot on for the time being considering the way the first fixture in Kolkata panned out, reflects how Varun’s T20 stocks have risen.
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After a superb series in South Africa, Varun once again was in the thick of things, with a match-winning 3-23 at Eden Gardens. As the England batters failed to pick him time and time again, the conversation started whether India had missed a trick by not including him in the Champions Trophy squad. Many felt that he could have come in place of one of the three finger-spinners in the 15. With his wicket-taking ability, Varun, in tandem with Kuldeep Yadav, would be an asset in Dubai.
Former national selector Devang Gandhi, though, feels that Varun still has some way to go before he finds a place in the Indian ODI set-up. “Varun has to keep working hard if he aspires to play 50-over cricket. I am sure that he has the quality to get there, but having said that, the selectors have picked the best possible 15. In the long run, if he keeps doing well, he can be an asset for the team,” Gandhi told TOI. While there is no questioning his talent with the ball, fielding could be an area of concern for Varun and in 50-over cricket, it can become a factor on bigger grounds.
But the story is different in T20 cricket. For someone who returned to the India T20I fold only three months ago – after a near three-year absence – the 33-year-old has quickly turned himself into a nailed-on starter and made people take notice despite being surrounded by multiple game-changers. The journey to become the enviable spin force he is today began a few years ago, when Varun asked his personal coach AC Prathiban: “Do you think that I can play for India again?”
“After the 2021 T20 WC, I analysed my bowling. What I found was that I was bowling more side-spin. I was not able to beat the batters through side-spin. I worked out that I have to beat the batters only through bounce, so I worked on my over-spin. That has been working till now,” Varun said in Kolkata on Wednesday.
While the slow bowler has made key technical adjustments before coming back as ‘Varun 2.0’, he has also been consciously working on tactics and the mental side of things with Prathiban.
“The rise of Varun has happened because of his calmness. Earlier, he used to think a lot on what had to be done. He had a lot on his mind. I tried to calm him down, he can be calmer when he is at the top of his run-up. He has many variations which he can bowl really well. So during a process, we minimised the types of balls he bowls. That has given him a lot of clarity and confidence,” Prathiban, a former Tamil Nadu off-spinner, told TOI.
“Before series or tournaments, we look at different batters and work out how Varun should bowl against them… what lengths he should bowl against each one of them and what is the sequence of balls. We try to eliminate extra pressure as we do not know what the batters are going to do. We just work on the controllables,” added Prathiban.
Varun’s accuracy, consistency and wicket-taking ability are seen as his biggest strengths. “He is pretty accurate with his lines, so different modes of dismissal come into the equation. When he is attacking the stumps, a batter can be bowled, stumped or dismissed LBW,” said TN bowling coach Guru Kedarnath recently.
“When you can bowl both off-spin and leg-spin, you need to have good control. Varun has it. Besides that, he has the knack of picking up wickets. He is a genuine wicket-taker and can win games outright for his team,” said Prathiban.
Up next is a ‘home game’ for Varun at the MA Chidambaram Stadium on Saturday and the fans would love another match-winning performance from the Chennai man, on a pitch which should assist him.
