Kolkata Knight Riders’ revival – three straight wins after a five-match slump and a wash-out – has lined up neatly with Varun Chakravarthy rediscovering both rhythm and patience. In Hyderabad on Sunday the mystery spinner took 3 for 36, working in tandem with Sunil Narine’s 2 for 31. Between them: 8-0-67-5. That spell alone more or less closed the door on Sunrisers Hyderabad’s chase.
First, the essentials. SRH came hard in the powerplay, Travis Head targeting anything just short of length. Narine’s first two overs disappeared for 20, while Varun’s opening set cost 13. KKR were hardly panicking, though: Narine returned for the tenth and the sixteenth overs, leaking only 11 more. Varun, pushed back until after the fielding restrictions, removed Head in the ninth yet still conceded 16. From there he slowed everything down, conceding eight runs and collecting two further wickets – R Smaran in the 12th, Aniket Verma in the 14th – as the surface and an increasingly soft ball took over.
“Varun started off bowling at a slightly faster pace and then he slowed it down [in the middle overs] once he got hit,” Ambati Rayudu pointed out on ESPNcricinfo’s TimeOut show. “I think he has come back very, very well into this tournament is now using the crease very well and also the angles well and also his pace. Whenever he bowls slow on a track like that, he is not easy to play against.”
Those adjustments felt a long way from the season’s opening fortnight, when Varun went 0 for 48 and 0 for 31 before a hand injury forced a brief break. Since returning: 10 wickets for 117 runs in four outings, comfortably his best stretch since last summer’s lean World Cup. Narine has stayed Narine – economy under seven, wickets at regular intervals – so KKR suddenly look the nuisance side no one wants to meet in the run-in.
Daniel Vettori, SRH head coach, admitted as much. “I think they found a [good] length with the spinners in particular,” he said afterwards. “Chakravarthy was able to take wickets even after we put him under pressure in those first couple overs, and wickets in T20 games and the IPL are the biggest currency. That’s what they managed to do the whole time.
“It’s two world-class spinners, who have plied their trade for a long time and been so successful for KKR and then the wicket just held up enough as the ball got older. I think it was probably more the softness of the ball rather than the pitch and we had an opportunity just to get through that period to try and set it up for the last four or five overs once the spinners had finished their allotment of overs.
“But just losing wickets at crucial times and probably the manner as well where we had the opportunity to get through that period and to lose those wickets in that fashion just held us back.”
Earlier in the tournament ESPNcricinfo’s analysts had highlighted Varun’s “desperation” to force breakthroughs – quicker through the air, fewer revs, the odd hopeful mystery ball – as a warning sign. Sunday’s effort felt the opposite: flight restored, pace dipped, angles mixed from both sides of the crease. In short, the craft he rode to a maiden India cap in 2021.
Whether it proves too late for a genuine play-off charge remains to be seen; KKR still need other results to fall kindly. Yet with Narine tight at one end and Varun unsettling set batters at the other, they finally resemble a side with a method rather than mere hope.
It has taken time and a temporary break for a bruised finger, but Varun appears to have remembered the simplest T20 lesson of all: sometimes slowing down is the quickest route back into a contest.
