His Adidas sizes had previously been requested. As though having a spot in India’s squad was merely a formality, the shirt, pants, and tracksuit were all checked off. In July 2024, Varun Chakravarthy was so certain that his time had arrived once more.
After winning the T20 World Cup, India was getting ready to send a backup squad to Zimbabwe, a series designed to give fringe players a chance to try out. With more than 40 wickets in two IPL seasons, a championship with the Kolkata Knight Riders, and a reputation as a bowler who can be relied upon in the most difficult overs, Varun Chakravarthy matched that description better than most. He was in line, rhythm, and form.
The squad then emerged. There was no sign of his name.
The pain was more intense than normal. This time, the focus was on how much he had already rebuilt rather than on form or numbers. He had stripped everything back after the 2021 World Cup disaster, when he went three games without taking a wicket and returned home to a barrage of internet hate, and the 2022 slump, when KKR dumped him in the middle. In addition to overhauling his stock ball, he altered his delivery stride, switched from sidespin to overspin, and modified his run-up.
However, the scars extended farther back. They went all the way back to his early years and all of his false starts. He had experimented with becoming a wicketkeeper, pace bowler, architect, freelancer, and even briefly dabbled in movies. Every switch left a bruise, and none of those lifestyles fit him.
In 2017, Varun Chakravarthy called Baba Aparajith one afternoon and made the direct declaration, “I’m a mystery spinner now.” He was solely known to the Aparajith twins as a quick bowler and frequent net trundler. They were intrigued and decided to take a look at the Gandhi Nagar nets in Adyar.
They were puzzled by what they discovered.
“We didn’t know if it would work in a proper game,” Indrajith says, “but in the nets he was really impressive and we were not able to read him easily.”
It sounded bold, even ridiculous. A former pacer who is now an architect and calls himself a mystery spinner? This new cap, however, stayed.
After a disappointing 2022 IPL season, he sat across from AC Prathiban in a Chennai cafe, coffee in hand, and asked bluntly, “Do you think I can play for India?” It wasn’t a light-hearted question. He had previously represented India. This elevated the question above a casual inquiry. It was existential.
Prathiban, who took Varun Chakravarthy on as a personal trainee after initially meeting him at the Madurai Panthers in 2022, wasn’t holding back. “I informed him that he would get his shot if he could take 20 wickets during an IPL season. That’s all.
He succeeded. 2023 wickets, 2024 wickets. He was not on the plane to Harare, even though the numbers were there. His bowling was not the subject of the backlash this time. He received criticism for his fielding.
Varun Chakravarthy ended up playing for the Tamil Nadu Premier League’s Dindigul Dragons a few days after the rebuff. He expressed what had been bothering him lately while spending a calm evening in his room with Ashok Kumar, the team’s fielding coach, also known as “Diamond” as Varun dubbed him.
Diamond listened, then used a straightforward truth to break through the annoyance.
Telling him, “Varun, ippo namma kitta edhana onnu illa,” “We must make any necessary repairs if something is missing. If we work on that, nobody will challenge you or tell you that you’re not good enough.”
Diamond made it apparent that Varun’s fielding problem was with awareness rather than hands. “He has always been a good catcher,” writes Diamond. “The problem was that if his batting went badly in the first innings, he would be sad and switch off in the field later.”
Diamond then started recording him while the games were going on. They then sat down, froze the video, and contrasted the two Varuns: one flat-footed and a beat late, the other walking in alert and ready.
Diamond explains, “I told him, see here,” “You are aware and prepared when you enter this ball. You are standing motionless and not responding to the following ball. You miss because of this. That’s not possible. Every ball requires you to step in it. 120 balls, 120 times. Always be in the game.
They practiced short third, short fine, long off, which is how he would actually field for India or in the IPL. Cones with diamond settings are positioned 15 yards ahead and 15 yards behind. The drills were straightforward and brutal: attack the ball, shoot flat to the keeper, and stroll in.
Varun Chakravarthy requested even more challenging sessions. ‘Diamond, don’t make it regular,’ he told me. “Make me tired.” Diamond smiles as she remembers. Diamond therefore caused him to become exhausted.
The improvements came gradually and were in line with Varun’s sessions with the Strength & Conditioning (S&C) coach.
He would locate Diamond, still gasping, after each successful save or catch, and utter their private line: “See? Observe what I did there.
Before greater notoriety occurred, there was a scathing critique of fine leg in the IPL. In February 2025, he was awarded Player of the Series against England, and he was happy that his fielding “drew some applause.” Naturally, his bowling earned him the prize.
Fielding was finally included in the squad because he was the last person to click the box. However, it was the heavier work and the technical reconstruction with Prathiban that had started two years prior that allowed him to come in and start playing right away, taking five wickets in Gqeberha and Rajkot.
Realising that a delivery that had once been the focal point of his “mystery” now slipped and provided little was the first step in the project. He was having trouble getting his carrom ball to revolve. Additionally, he needed a dependable away-going ball to set up his best ball, the googly, if he wanted it to remain his primary weapon.
At that point, he returned to Prathiban with seriousness.
“I will be honest, it was his idea of getting that leg-spinner,” Prathiban asserts. I asked him if he wanted to continue using the carrom ball, which was his top ball up until that point, as he had a few grips. However, it wasn’t strong enough to remove it, and I couldn’t see any deviation off the wicket. “What else do you have?” I asked him. One of the options he brought with him was the leg-spinner.
They experimented with possibilities in Chennai’s nets, and the difference appeared almost instantly. The legbreak fared well under pressure. Prathiban recalls, “Only the leg-spinner was coming out well when the pressure came.” “So we said, this is the one.”
He initially bowled it seam-up: traditional, tidy. However, the seam itself proved to be a clue. Proficient batters were able to estimate the spin and read the seam. Googly was jumbled, and legbreak was seam-up. “We must improve ourselves. Prathiban advised Varun Chakravarthy to go scramble leg spinner. And it was quite effective.
That scrambled-seam legbreak was only half the story; it was a minor surface technique with a huge impact. Varun Chakravarthy was forced to consider the axis by Prathiban. It comes in front of the hand and is essentially a side spin for the away-going delivery. You can see the whole ball, I mean. In essence, you can see the entire ball as a batter when the ball is released because the back of the hand is always facing the sight screen. You never see the ball when it’s overspin because it’s always behind the fingertips. In essence, you reduce the batter reading time by 0.5 seconds.
In cricket, half a second is a long time. The batsman misses the micro-cues that indicate whether the ball will turn or straighten while it is concealed under his fingers. Varun Chakravarthy ability to bowl overspin with speed, revs, and pop rather than as a slow, loopy ball proved even more beneficial. Prathiban explains clearly why that was out of the ordinary: “Keshav Maharaj, Nathan Lyon, and even Adil Rashid bowl overspin, but not at that speed. Varun moves quickly and vertically. He is able to bowl overspin quickly while maintaining bounce. That is extremely uncommon.
Higher speed and more rpm meant more bounce and more uncertainty. Because not every pitch turns, at least not in international cricket and the IPL.
Reducing side-spin could appear to be a compromise on ball-turning, but Prathiban clarified that it’s more nuanced than that. “The ball has turned if it pitches on off stump and strikes the off stump after you bowl from the middle of the box. A greater angle will result in a smaller turn. The turn is greater if he approaches the stumps a little more closely since the angle is smaller. That then turns into a natural variety. You won’t get many turns from any T20 wickets in India.”
Because of the scrambled seam and fast overspin, Varun was able to conceal the wobble and beat hitters who had little time to respond by using height and angles at the crease.
Varun Chakravarthy needed to master biomechanics, the last component in the puzzle, in order to piece everything together. According to Prathiban, “the delivery stride is key,” It’s where you can create force with your body weight, which can lead to revolutions. You can impart more spin and speed if your delivery stride is more stable. For power hitters, who require a solid platform and firm shoulders, the same idea applies.
He became a very challenging bowler to deal with once he combined such steadiness with overspin at his pace. “Overspinners are slowed by batters. His bounced through more quickly. That was the difference.
First, they tested the job in the most difficult areas. The ball slides over astroturf; there is hardly any natural turn. His craft would endure anyplace if it did so there. According to Prathiban, “we imagine Buttler is batting, say,” during the drill. “We believe it’s a one-run ball if it reaches the proper length and channel. There is never a wicket ball, not even Varun Chakravarthy greatest ball. We consider it a boundary if the length and channel are not met.
The meetings were tactical as well as technical. They discussed match simulation and sequencing. He claims that part of the coach’s duty is pruning: Varun Chakravarthy desired seven or eight weapons. Three or four that could be carried out under pressure were what Prathiban insisted on. “The most offensive ball is also the best defensive ball. The batsman will make a mistake if you bowl that perfectly.
In the IPL, it worked: performances piled up and wickets came. within the domestic circuit. within the IPL.
Varun Chakravarthy already possessed a lot of the ability to read batters in the moment and outthink them, so those technical changes worked like magic. Prathiban stated: “I won’t say that Varun’s situation has improved simply because he switched from side spin to over spin. It’s similar to how he reads the batsman’s thinking and combines technique with strategy.”
He was therefore greatly troubled by the Zimbabwe exclusion. Varun Chakravarthy contacted Prathiban and spoke for a long time, expressing frustration and passion. Hours later, he called once more, his tone more composed but his goal unmistakable. He stated, “We are practicing tomorrow.” His second flight had just begun.
Prathiban explains, “Everyone has their ups and downs, but this guy has seen a lot of different downs,” in a somewhat shaky voice. “He has done a lot of things and everything was a failure and this hurt him.”
Varun Chakravarthy was asked to do fitness tests a few weeks later. After the National Cricket Academy (NCA) tests, he anticipated being selected for the Bangladesh series and heading directly to the hotel. Rather, he was instructed to return home. He gave Prathiban another call. I’m frustrated. sentimental. However, his phone buzzed as he was about to head home. It was different this time. They had chosen him. The “rebirth” he mentioned during his first Twenty20 International in three years in Gwalior was well underway.
He stopped and started crying. He then gave Prathiban a call.
Cricket was not discussed by the coach. He grabbed a sentence from the Tamil movie Soorarai Pottru, which both men were familiar with. The movie, which was inspired by the tale of Air Deccan, concludes with a dream that has finally come true: a low-cost airline’s first complete flight taking off into the sky following years of rejection and hardship.
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