AHMEDABAD: When the new Motera threw open its new doors in 2021, a door used to grab a lot of eyeballs. Next to the media centre and located inside the intestines of the cavernous Narendra Modi Stadium, it separated two unwalled spaces. The scribes going to the media centre always used to chuckle whenever they were passing by. But the novelty soon wore off. These days, the door acts as a reminder that most mysteries, once opened often enough, stop being mysteries. After the hacks became used to its uniqueness — its idiosyncrasies — it very quickly faded to the background.
One mystery, though, has thrived. Continues to even after years of peeling back the layers. Varun Chakravarthy. Over the better part of the last decade, he has added more strings to his bow. Now, in 2026, on the eve of India's opening Super Eights game against South Africa in the same Stadium, the 34-year-old is one of the first names on the team sheet. At a time when the T20 format forces bowlers to innovate to stay ahead of the game, the spinner has repeatedly set the agenda by showing what's possible if you expand your imagination.
When he made the international debut in Sri Lanka in 2021, he was a spinner who used to rely a lot on sidespin. There's some spin off the surface but there's also significant drift. The grip is such that one part of the ball is visible to the batter at the point of delivery. But when batters started lining him up and hitting through the line, Chakravarthy started leaking runs. When he lost his place in the international set-up post the T20 World Cup in 2021, he didn't sulk.
He turned to his personal coach, AC Prathiban. Chakravarthy came up with the idea of 'imparting overspin' on the ball. Overspin makes the ball a loaded grenade because of the dip and the resultant bounce. With overspin on the ball, he has been able to weaponise a lot of his variations. "At the end of 2022, I started working with him," Prathiban, a former TN spinner, tells this daily. "Now, he's looking to attack. Mindset is to attack, not to be on the defensive side. That's a significant change in his bowling approach. That's something he has worked on. We have challenged him. We have tried to work on uncomfortable things. We have forced him to do it and that has eventually forced him to be a better cricketer and a better person. "He knows about every batter. He's not a reactive bowler. He understands what the batter is about to do. That's how he stays ahead of them."
R Ashwin, somebody who has closely worked with Chakravarthy as they share a Tamil Nadu Premier League (TNPL) team (Dindigul Dragons), has often been described as a cricket tragic but his younger statement is not dissimilar. There is of course this story that he turned up for his own wedding reception with a cricket ball in his hand. It kind of accurately captures the dedication he has reserved for his craft, to constantly become the best version of himself every day. He has also spent time with Abhishek Nayar, a former assistant coach of the national side, to focus on his batting. It's something Prathiban also notes.
Even if Chakravarthy has been fairly open in sharing his secrets with the world (there's a one minute clip of him explaining how he flicks the ball with the supposedly weaker ring finger to an Australian broadcaster during last year's T20I series Down Under, for example), batters have had a lot of problems in trying to line him up. Since the beginning of 2025, he's the leading wicket-taker in this format in international cricket (49). He plays with speed, revs and angles, all to give himself a marginal advantage of the person at the other end of the 22 yards.
At the ongoing World Cup, the TN spinner has been the hardest bowler to hit (minimum 30 balls). He has conceded only 5.16 runs per over while striking once every eight balls. You extrapolate those numbers over an entire T20I innings and he's on course to bowl out teams every 13 overs while conceding approximately 70 runs. He's also conceded only four boundaries (three fours and a six) across four games. Even taking into account some of the pitches have been fairly helpful to the slower bowlers, those are grand returns for the spinner. The next phase of the competition, though, will be tougher. But on some ultra flat decks where 200 was routinely breached by both sides when the Proteas toured India late last year, the spinner picked up 10 wickets at an economy of 7.46.
If India are to leave Ahmedabad on Sunday with two points in the bag — and indeed come back to this venue for the final on March 8 — they will look to their primary spinner to deliver the goods. Again.