From T20 World Cup to ICC Champions Trophy – Varun Chakravarthy’s career comes full circle at the same venue

Through the course of the evening, Varun will go about answering every single one of those questions and also vindicate his inclusion in the squad that came at the expense of a batting talent like Yashasvi Jaiswal.

When India’s think tank assembled in January to pick the provisional Champions Trophy squad, they had spent a considerable time pondering whether to include Varun or not. To back up his exceptional numbers in T20s, Varun had shown in the Vijay Hazare Trophy that he isn’t just a shortest-format bowler. But without an ODI cap to his name, taking an inexperienced spinner for an ICC event was seen as a gamble. However, as Varun went about troubling England in the T20Is, and with Kuldeep Yadav struggling for rhythm, they eventually turned to the 33-year-old.

His comeback to the national fold has been nothing short of a dream run, which even he wouldn’t have fancied writing in a movie script when he was actively pursuing to be a film-maker seven years ago. But his life and career has taken more sharp turns than his deliveries that continue to be hard for batsmen to decode.

When India picked Varun for the Champions Trophy, the only question was when and against whom they would unleash him. That moment finally came against New Zealand in a dead rubber, where it also provided Rohit Sharma and Gautam Gambhir a live demonstration of where Varun stands in the ODI format. Unlike England batsmen, who just tried to slog him, New Zealand would be an ideal line-up for Varun to challenge himself. Moreover, with his inclusion, India had only more to gain as apart from strengthening their attack, it helped Rohit manage the workload of his seamers ahead of Tuesday’s semi-final.

What India got in the end was a pleasant headache going into the clash against Australia. With a four-pronged spin attack causing all sorts of problems, Rohit and Gambhir will go to bed on Sunday night with an important question: Whether to play four spinners or go back to the three-two combo, and if so, who to leave out? Dropping Varun now looks out of question.

Redemption time

For Varun, this was the night he had been waiting for. Off the first ball he bowled, he conceded a boundary, and appeared a bit nervous in the first spell. “The first spell of mine, I was a little nervous because the previous things, the emotions and whatever happened in the last three years before in this ground, were all playing in my mind. I was trying to keep it down, control it. Virat (Kohli) bhai, Rohit and even Hardik (Pandya), they were telling me ‘calm down, calm down’. They were coming and talking to me. That really helped,” Varun said.

The first spell, which included the wicket of Will Young, wasn’t his best by any means, but still he had figures of 5-0-16-1. It was a night when he had to be patient as the New Zealand batsmen were prepared to see him off. But what helped Varun, apart from the conditions, was that, in Axar Patel and Ravindra Jadeja, he had two spinners to pile on the pressure at the other end. Varun has the armoury to feed off the pressure created by them.

In T20s, Varun knows the sequence of deliveries he is lined up to bowl on the night. He is as meticulous as one can get. But in ODIs, he had to space out the wicket-taking deliveries and find if they bring him the same success. Playing the Vijay Hazare Trophy helped him to a large extent.

“My sequencing of balls, as in how I construct an over, is totally different compared to the 50-over format. And that I was able to figure out when I played the last two years in Vijay Hazare. And it really helped me to understand when I can bowl my incoming delivery or outgoing delivery or the straighter one or the top-spin, whatever it is. That gave me a sense of awareness of when to bowl what, it is completely different from what I do in T20s,” Varun said.

In the second spell, Varun would reap rewards for his patience. When he came on to bowl, the required rate was over a run-a-ball. It provided an opportunity to be lethal and he grabbed it with both hands, removing Glenn Phillips and Michael Bracewell in successive overs to kill the chase before taking out Mitchell Santer and Matt Henry to complete a five-wicket haul.

“It is a patience game. You just need to wait it out – in such slow wickets, the ball doesn’t turn fast. If it’s your day it happens to you,” Varun added.