Varun Chakravarthy: Mystery spinner comes of age

Varun Chakravarthy, the star of India’s comprehensive win over New Zealand on Sunday evening in Dubai, does not have the athletic look of the modern-day cricketer. In a team with live wire fielders like Virat Kohli, Ravindra Jadeja, Hardik Pandya and Axar Patel, the Tamil Nadu player looks curiously inert, even a touch sloppy, in a shapeless Team India jersey and tracks that seem a size large for him.

Before his team mates saluted his masterly fifer against the Kiwis, they looked the other way when he failed to hold onto a falling ball and worse, kneed it across the line. Of course, the dropped catch would not count as it was off a free hit, but the fumble was just one of things you don’t want to happen close to the boundary beyond which a partisan Indian crowd is watching every moment on the field.

Chakravarthy looks disorganised even at the start of his bowling mark, his sleeves almost touching his palms as he tweaks the ball. Then something happens when he takes a few quick strikes and rotates his arm to release his leg spinners. He gauges the pitch and adjusts his length within a few deliveries. His rounded action flows smoothly from the twist of the hip to the perfect flip of wrist and ball bores into the stumps leaving the batter with little time to work out options. Its not that he escapes the fate of bowlers in T 20 or ODI formats but can, as he showed in Dubai, get even quickly for a six hit off him.

Is Chakravarthy a “mystery” bowler? The regularity with he picks wickets in state leagues, IPL, T 20s and now ODIs suggests batters don’t quite figure him out. His cool demeanour indicates he does not find this surprising at all. When his victims look at the videos of how they got out, they might be struck by how inevitable it all seems. They often fall trying unsuccessfully to keep the ball out of the wickets or to desperate hoicks in the search for an aerial route to counter attack.

Chakravarthy faces a sterner test against Australia on Tuesday and it is possible teams will find better ways to play him as coaches and video editors pour over match footage. But Chakravarthy is not necessarily doing something that is radically different. He may not be reinvesting the wheel. He is bowling wrong ones and top spinners that attack the stumps with canny variations in pace and length. He is just relentless and the precision of his art frustrates batters as scoring pressure mounts.

The maze he weaves around the opposition can induce a brain freeze as batters view him with fear and trepidation. Chakravarthy has played in the IPL since 2019, T 20Is since 2021 but has only now come into his own. He is no doubt an improved bowler but this didn’t happen all at once. Gautam Gambhir, who has seen him play for Kolkata Knight Riders, became India coach and suddenly there was someone calling the shots who believed in Chakravarthy.

Champions Trophy 2025DubaiHardik PandyaIndia-New ZealandIndian cricketRavindra JadejaVirat KohliWeb Exclusive