Varun Chakaravarthy
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Early life and career
Till 2025 Feb
Venkata Krishna B, March 8, 2025: The Indian Express
Little Varun would have known a decade back then that he was playing a cameo in a movie almost resembling the story of his life. Today, he is playing a starring role for India at the Champions Trophy along with an ensemble cast.
Varun Chakravarthy played a cameo in the 2014 Tamil movie ‘Jeeva’, starring Vishnu Vishal in the lead role. Little Varun would have known then that he was playing a cameo in a movie almost resembling the story of his life. The movie revolves around a talented cricketer, who with his modest means struggles to keep his dream alive while fighting the system. The protagonist is seen as an outlier, an unwelcome guest in a local club until he wins the dressing room with his talent. Even as he climbs the ladder that outlier tag hangs around him, nearly pushing him to quit cricket before a phone call from an IPL scout changes his life for good. The movie ends with the Jeeva earning an India cap.
Like the titular character in Jeeva, Varun is an outlier in every sense. He is a throwback to the decades gone by, when Indian spinners were expected only to bowl. He isn’t a product of India’s fairly robust cricketing system. He didn’t feature in any age-group tournaments that took him to the Ranji Trophy, to then be brought into the national fold. Instead, his career began with tennis ball, then TNPL, fast-tracked to IPL and now it has taken him to the Indian dressing room. Now, playing his second ICC event – his first in four years – at the Champions Trophy, Varun is Rohit Sharma’s trump card. Despite having three quality spinners in Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav, Varun’s mystery element compelled his inclusion, first in the squad, and then in the XI.
In 2021, despite having become a household name on the back of performances in the IPL, when he was picked in T20 World Cup which included familiar faces, it still felt overwhelming for Varun. He had gotten acquainted with most Indian players during the IPL, but in the dressing room, it felt different as he would keep mostly to himself. Former India bowling coach Bharat Arun recalls Varun’s India T20 debut. “He definitely looked a bit overawed. He was scared of even telling Virat Kohli what field setting he wanted. He ended up bowling to the field given to him,” Arun, who coaches him at the Kolkata Knight Riders, tells The Indian Express.
“But look at him now. He is a totally different cricketer. We say cricket at the elite level is 90% mental and Varun stands true for it. He went back to domestic cricket and IPL, got wickets and that is showing in his confidence. He now knows what to do when given the ball. He is setting his own field, because he believes in himself more.”
As Varun admitted recently on a YouTube channel Fries With Potate, he did feel out of place in those years. “Obviously, when I was 26, I didn’t have a history of hitting the gym because I was in a 9-5 job earlier. Then I directly got into a cricket team and first three years I kept failing the fitness tests. If someone says, ‘You have a yo-yo test slotted for tomorrow’, I never used to get sleep. Have got panic attacks. People who don’t know the process will panic more. Of course, even now I have anxiety and pressure, but I know how to handle them.”
Varun’s journey is similar to that of Jack Iverson, who played five Tests for Australia in 1950 and 1951. A jackaroo in the mallees of Victoria, he participated in World War II in the Middle East before moving to Papua New Guinea where he learned to spin the ball by gripping it between his thumb and middle finger. Having first played club cricket for Melbourne CC in 1948, he would play Test cricket in 1951. Varun’s arc too is similarly impromptu. The changeover from an architect in 2016 to a mystery spinner in 2018 who got the IPL cap in 2019 happened in just three years.
For someone who wants to make suspense-thriller movies once he finishes his cricketing career, a rewind of his career would provide him with all the unpredictable twists.
Before he became a professional cricketer in 2017, for a year Varun played local tournaments because, “those were matches when somebody was batting, a random person would come and say if you hit a six, you will get Rs 500. If you hit a boundary Rs 300. It was giving me money,” he would recall. If not that, he would go searching for opportunities to bowl in the nets to league-level players. At one stage, he was a net bowler to former India opener Kris Srikkanth’s son Anirudha in the nets, who used to pay him Rs 500 for a session.
With offers opening up in lower-division cricket, he would get a reality check when he knocked on the doors of the academies. “I was the odd one out because at every academy you will find only players below 20 years of age. I used to tell them, don’t teach me anything, just allow me to bowl for three hours. Because at that stage you can’t teach someone to how to play cricket so every day I would bowl 300 deliveries to prepare for the league cricket,” he says.
When an opportunity opened up in the second division, the team would stop pacer Varun from becoming a mystery spinner. “They didn’t take me, so I went to the fifth division (lowest in TNCA back then). Even there I started as a pacer and had just 8 wickets to show in 7 matches. But in the next game, in the middle of the game, I just ran in and started bowling spin and ended up with 28 wickets in 4 matches. And I was in the newspapers now,” Varun adds.
Starting to bowl mystery spin wasn’t a straightforward choice. In the time he spent recovering from a knee injury when he was still a pacer, Varun would sit and watch videos of Anil Kumble, Rashid Khan and Adam Zampa. By his own admission at one point, he had up to 18 variations before he cut them down to 4 sans any personal coaching.
While the mystery spin would land him a TNPL contract in 2017, what is little known to the world is he was picked as an opening batsman by Karaikudi Kalais. “I played only one match, but nobody gives me batting Sir,” he would rue to Srikkanth once. “After Impact Player rule came in, I don’t even get an opportunity. They just see me as a bowler. Hopefully I will have a chance soon.”
However, by next season with word spreading about the mystery element, Madurai Panthers picked him at the TNPL auction. By 2019, he was wearing Punjab Kings colours in the IPL, but as luck would have, just played one match. “Since I was over-excited, I didn’t handle myself well. I was struggling with shoulder pain, but kept bowling and ended up tearing my muscle. I’d no clue back then.”
Along the way, Varun had to deal with trolls. In 2022, when he picked up just 6 wickets in 11 IPL matches, he recalls getting a lot of taunts. “There have been matches where if I don’t bowl well and get hit, they used to tell me ‘I’m not mystery but maesthri (construction worker in Tamil)’ because I’m an architect. They have told I’m fit only for that. All of these messages used to be from Dream XI fans who used to put money on me performing.”
Varun’s move to KKR ahead of the 2020 season would be a game-changer. With Dinesh Karthik around, he had a familiar face as a mentor. More importantly, he also had Sunil Narine, mystery spinner extraordinaire. Though their styles are not similar – Narine is an off-spinner who bowls the one that goes away, Varun is a leg-spinner who bowls googlies – he would become the Trinidadian’s understudy before standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him in the last two seasons.
“They are different bowlers, but they discuss a lot,” Arun says. “In the last two years, he has understood his bowling very well and knows when to use the variations. There are just three, but he is able to create illusions in the minds of the batsmen. More than the ones that spin, it is those deliveries that straighten that are getting him wickets,” he adds.
Over the past 12 months, Varun may have hardly got time to think about anything beyond his cricket. But when he wants to switch off from cricket, he goes back to architecture. Apart from being a good distraction, it has also helped him with his game. “When I look at an empty space of land, I visualise a building. Similarly, when a batsman is there, I get to visualise what is going to do with his stance and grip,” he says.
