Kolkata: India have always looked more in sync with the T20 format but that readiness has scaled envious levels with the emergence of a squad handpicked from IPL after the 2024 T20 World Cup win. Varun Chakravarthy epitomises that efficacy with a no-nonsense bowling approach. The slow bowler can turn the ball both ways, has decent pace variation and can be very miserly. In short, he is ideal for the shortest format.
So far, this has been Chakravarthy’s year. Player-of-the-Series in the T20Is against England, India’s wildcard in their victorious Champions Trophy campaign, followed by an IPL where he took 17 wickets at an economy of 7.66, Chakravarthy’s evolution has been steady and sure.
It didn’t seem so in 2022, when after years of highs Kolkata Knight Riders were forced to bench him mainly because his carrom ball wasn’t turning sharply. It is another thing that the Eden Gardens pitches for that season weren’t exactly spin friendly but that stumble alerted Chakravarthy to the idea of exploring other options.
He always had the googly, but bowling leg-breaks seam-up instead of scrambled-seam turned out to be a gamechanger. It instantly helped him get an upper hand against right-handed batters, automatically pushing Chakravarthy ahead of the other spinners in the pecking order.
All this happened when Ravindra Jadeja was still available to play for India. But his retirement after the 2024 World Cup final has turned the focus on to a select group of spinners with different matchup criteria — Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav’s left-arm bowling taking care of the ball turning away from the right-handed batters and Chakravarthy and Ravi Bishnoi bringing in the element of doubt with the googlies.
He was probably shielded a bit against left-handed batters in the 2025 IPL but even then Chakravarthy’s economy has never come under threat. He attributes this to his ability to sequence the deliveries in such a way that it keeps the batters guessing. “Basically, the ball can deviate in three ways: left, right or straight,” he had said during IPL. “So, how I choose those balls, the sequencing of them — that’s where the tactical side of the game comes and that’s what I’m working on.”
It was the same tactic that worked brilliantly against England in the T20I series early this year. A fifer at Rajkot set up a generous series haul of 14 wickets, Chakravarthy ended with an economy of 7.66 against some of the best batters in the game. “His transformation from IPL to international T20 cricket has been phenomenal,” Gambhir had said about him after that 4-1 win. “And this series was probably the benchmark as well because England is a high-quality side. They’ve got some really quality cricketers and the kind of surfaces we’ve played on – they were fantastic batting wickets and the way he’s bowled those tough overs has been phenomenal.”
What was unique about that series is how India went for a spin-heavy attack in each game, picking just one pacer almost as a rule of thumb. Having Washington Sundar and Axar Patel to complement Ravi Bishnoi and Chakravarthy not only allowed for greater batting depth but also the flexibility to keep attacking throughout the middle overs.
“It’s that phase between seven and 15 (overs),” Gambhir pointed out, one that KKR too has almost ritualistically set aside for Chakravarthy to work his magic. Which probably explains why more than half (55 wickets) of Chakravarthy’s IPL haul (100 wickets) has come against the middle order (Nos 4 to 7) compared to the top order, accounting for 34 wickets.
It may be fair to assume that Gambhir won’t tinker much with his bowling plans, given the surfaces for the Asia Cup (in the UAE) and next year’s T20 World Cup (in India) are expected to be on the slower side. Since the T20 World Cup, Gambhir has anyway stuck to four spinners in T20Is — Chakravarthy, Patel, Bishnoi and Sundar. Among them, Chakravarthy has the best average (11.25) and strike rate (8.9), and most wickets (31). This includes two five-wicket hauls.
Chakravarthy can bowl in the Powerplay, middle overs as well as at the death. He has displayed command of the degree of side spin or underspin that he can impart to deliveries. Add to that his height, introducing the factor of angles and release points to contend with an open-chested action.
Analysts might still try to find ways to work around all that, but there is no way a batter can be prepared for the sharp, faster delivery. Glenn Phillips was at the end of one such ball in the Champions Trophy final — a cross-seam googly cutting in at 92kph and cramping him for space before crashing into the stumps. All those possibilities crunched into four overs of T20 makes Chakravarthy India’s best slow bowling bet in the next one year.