Mystery spinner Varun making the most of a shot at redemption Premium

Varun Chakravarthy's journey from struggling cricketer to T20 World Cup hero and mentor's protege, a tale of redemption and reinvention.

For three years, Varun Chakravarthy was overcome by a burning desire. Having flirted with international cricket, and not very successfully at that, the architect from Chennai was desperate for a second chance, for another opportunity to showcase his wares to a larger audience.

A late entrant to competitive cricket, Varun was 27 when he first played for Tamil Nadu, in the 50-over Vijay Hazare Trophy in September 2018. he broke into the Indian Twenty20 International team more than two and a half years later, during a tour of Sri Lanka in July 2021. That was on the back of a terrific first season in IPL 2020 for Kolkata Knight Riders, when he picked up 17 wickets in 13 games, at an impressive economy of 6.84 runs per over.

He is officially listed as a leg-break/googly bowler with a greater preference for the latter, but he had a terrific bag of tricks that contributed to the bamboozlement of batters of all class. It was no surprise that the tag ‘mystery spinner’ was quickly affixed to him, a tag that was further embellished by 18 wickets for KKR in IPL 2021.

Varun didn’t have an outstanding tour of Sri Lanka, taking two wickets in 11.3 overs across three matches, but an economy rate of just over 5 and his pedigreed propensity to dismiss batters earned him a berth in the Indian squad for the T20 World Cup in the UAE in October-November 2021. Picked ahead of senior Tamil Nadu spinner R. Ashwin, he finished wicketless in both of India’s first two losses, to Pakistan and New Zealand respectively. By failing to bag a wicket against Scotland too, Varun finished the World Cup without any success at all. By then, he hadn’t taken a wicket in his last five T20Is, which ushered him out of the Indian team.

His travails spilled over to IPL 2022 when he had his worst season since his debut for Kings XI Punjab in 2019, 11 matches yielding a mere six scalps. To make matters worse, he went at 8.51 runs per over. Game over, the experts tut-tutted.

It could have been tempting for Varun to move on, to chuck it all away, because he was equipped for an alternative career, courtesy his engineering degree, and cricket wasn’t being particularly kind to him. But showing that he is made of sterner stuff, Varun went back to the drawing board, made a conscious decision to reinvent himself and returned a more dangerous, rounded and lethal version in IPL 2023.

The transformation