KKR's Bowling Sensation Varun Chakravarthy Gave Up Cricket At 17, Became An Architect Before Becoming Mystery Spinner
Published - 24 Oct 2020, 09:35 PM | Updated - 23 Aug 2024, 12:36 AM
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Varun Chakravarthy is finally living up to the expectations in the ongoing season of the Indian Premier League. On Saturday, the Kolkata Knight Riders spinner took the first five-wicket haul of the ongoing competition to help his side thrash Delhi Capitals by 59 runs.
Asked to bat first, the Kolkata-based outfit rode on fifties from Sunil Narine and Nitish Rana to post a mammoth total of 194 for 6 in the allotted 20 overs. In reply, Delhi ended their innings on a modest 135 for 9. Varun Chakravarthy was the destructor-in-chief with the ball, taking 5 wickets for just 20 runs off his four overs.
The latest performance will further bolster Varun Chakravarthy’s place in the KKR side. The Tamil Nadu spinner has already become his side’s main spinner of the season. In ten games so far, he has picked up 12 wickets while conceding just 7.05 runs per over.
A tough past:
Varun Chakravarthy might have become a household name now and is one of KKR’s main players but the spinner had to endure a tough past to make it big in the game.
He had started his cricket career as a wicketkeeper-batsman at 13 but quit the game at 17 . He then faced several rejections in age-group cricket before deciding to ditch the game and pursue a degree in architecture at the SRM University in Chennai. After completing the five-year course, he started working as a freelance architect.
But then again, cricket was always his first love and he soon quit his job and joined CromBest Cricket Club as a seam-bowling all-rounder. But he kept suffering the setbacks. He was soon sidelined after suffering a knee injury and then decided to become a spinner.
After recovering from the injury, he signed with Jubilee Cricket Club in the fourth division of the Chennai League, and worked on become a mystery spinner. In 2017-18, Varun bagged 31 wickets in seven games at an average of 8.26 and economy rate of 3.06 in the one-day competition.
He shot to the limelight in 2018 after impressing in the Tamil Nadu Premier League. During that season, he had bowled 40 overs of which 125 balls were dots. His economy rate of 4.7 was the best among bowlers who bowled at least 15 overs. Varun Chakravarthy had also made a brief appearance in a Tamil movie called Jeeva.
The big break in the game soon arrived as Kings XI Punjab signed him for a whopping INR 8.4 crore – 42 times than his base price of INR 20 Lakh ahead of the 2019 season.
But it was a season to forget as he played just one game, conceded 35 runs and was out of the remainder of the tournament with an finger injury. But destiny gave him another chance last year when KKR signed him for INR 4 Crore and Varun is now finally proving himself at the big stage.
