“Sometimes when he talks, you will think he is stupid,” Varun Chakravarthy’s mentor AC Pratheepan tells The Indian Express. “Stupid because nobody will think like him. He is sequencing each and every ball. If you ask him, he can list out how he is going to deliver the 24 balls he has to bowl. Of course, it will change depending on who the batsman is, but he has it sequenced. He now very well understands which delivery to bowl when and more importantly what length,” Pratheepan adds.
That in nutshell captures the evolution of Varun and the reason he has had a stellar 2024, and now is at the forefront of India taking its T20 game to an unchartered territory. Or in other words, India 2.0 isn’t possible without Varun 2.0.
On January 1, while recalling what a splendid year 2024 had been for him, Varun had posted AR Rahman’s “Chinna Chinna Aasai” (Choti si aasha song) on his instagram and ended with these lines: “Nalla irupom!! Nalla irupom!! Ellarum nalla irupom!! (We will be fine! We will be fine!! All of us will be fine!!).
There was every reason for Varun to believe so. After spending more than two years in the wilderness after the 2021 T20 World Cup, the second-half of 2024 had truly belonged to the architect engineer from Chennai. As he showed at the Eden Gardens on Wednesday, he is at the forefront of India taking its T20 game to an uncharted territory.
Varun 2.0 is totally a different version of his old self, one who broke into the system by playing tennis ball cricket. From being a spinner who relied mostly on carrom ball, he has evolved into a one who rarely uses them these days. From relying heavily on side-spin he has switched to bowling over-spin, because it is giving him more turn and bounce – two elements that are bound to test any batsmen even if they swing their bats wildly with all velocity.
In all this evolution, there is one other aspect that stands out when Varun operates with the ball these days – the plotting, the sequencing that his coach talked about.
After the Vijay Hazare Trophy and just before leaving to join the Indian team at Kolkata for the England series, Varun had one session with Pratheepan. It was their first since the 33-year-old made a comeback to the national fold on the back of strong performances in domestic circuit and the IPL. And what Pratheepan saw was a bowler whose confidence keeps growing.
“He came and just wanted to ensure the basics are in place – the run-up speed, loading and release. He didn’t do anything else…but what struck me was six months ago, he had that fear, ‘what if it goes wrong now in the Indian team’. But now that fear of failure is nowhere to be seen. He looks more confident and more importantly he feels he belongs,” Pratheepan says.
That sense of fear wasn’t without reasons. Much it had come down to the tweaks he had made to his bowling and the wickets that keep coming have been a validation to his boldness to change and adapt instead of just fizzling out. One of the biggest tweaks though was on his mindset.
“We wanted to ensure the process begins with the run-up and ends when the ball is released. What happens at the other end shouldn’t dictate what he is going to do. If the run-up (speed included), alignment and release points are in place, then the outcome will also be good. If someone hits a good ball for a boundary or a six, so be it. But you can’t be bowling to a batsman where he wants.
“Before he was out, (Jos) Buttler hit him for a six. I thought Varun had bowled short, but in replays I saw it was Buttler who went on the backfoot to manufacture the shot. And the next ball, Varun cramped him for room and he was dismissed. If he had just reacted to what Buttler did, then he may have gone for runs,” Pratheepan says.
Varun also does spot bowling in training, where he has to consistently hit 4-6m length. “We took the batsmen out of the equation and just focused on hitting the ideal lengths. Once the length is right, the line automatically falls in place. These changes are giving him more options to get wickets. The ball spins more, he extracts more bounce and he is constantly attacking the stumps. So he is always in the game,” Pratheepan says.
And to retain the mystery while using the carom ball less frequently, Varun has been smart in terms of his trajectory and release points as well. Resultantly, the batsman have been playing for an angle that actually doesn’t exist. On Wednesday, Liam Livingstone was the latest to find it out in the most brutal fashion, trying to steer towards off but finding the ball sneaking in through the bat-and-pad gap.
“It is all about creating an illusion. When you bowl from wide off the stumps or close, batsmen are expecting to play the angle of spin. But when it spins just a bit or even if there is no turn, Varun can beat the batsman by just straightening.”
Next up for Varun is his maiden international outing at Chepauk, his home venue on Saturday. Last IPL, playing for Kolkata Knight Riders, when he came here to face Chennai Super Kings, Varun’s entire family had turned up at the MA Chidambaram Stadium wearing the famous yellow jersey much to the disbelief of the spinner. On Saturday, one can definitely expect them with Varun’s name on the back in the blue jersey.
India's Varun Chakravarthy celebrates with Sanju Samson after bowling out England's Harry Brook. (Reuters) 
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