As Rachin Ravindra and Will Young got off the blocks immediately, Rohit turned to Varun to bring him the maiden dismissal. He obliged by dismissing Young, before returning in a later spell to take the wicket of Glenn Phillips and put the brakes over a fledgling partnership. Varun has been a part of the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) squad since 2020, and debuted for India in the T20 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2021.
However, a poor wicketless outing saw him get phased out of the international setup, before toiling hard in the domestic circuit for Tamil Nadu, playing a pioneering role for KKR in their title-winning unit in IPL 2024, and an impeccable understanding with head coach Gautam Gambhir helped him earn the India cap back again in October last year.
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While Varun inspired India to win T20I series’ against South Africa and England, it was the X-factor he displayed blended with a sense of plugging the flow of runs that got him a late entry into the Champions Trophy squad as a replacement for Yashasvi Jaiswal.
Quite like Shreyas Iyer, Varun went back to the drawing board to participate in tournaments such as the Vijay Hazare Trophy and Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy to get back in the groove and understand the layering of overs.
Though he has always had a host of variations up his sleeves, the ability to sequence it properly is what separates a match-winning bowler from someone who fails to overcome the problem of plenty.
“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 after the Champions Trophy match against New Zealand last Sunday.
He added, “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.”
Particularly with regards to his conditioning in the ODI format, Varun has played 26 List A games and picked an astonishing 67 wickets at an economy and bowling strike rate of 4.35 and 20.1 respectively, picking five-wicket hauls on five different instances. With experts weighing on the off-spinner forming a long-term partnership alongside Kuldeep Yadav in ODIs, the 34-year-old looks set to have a formidable run in white-ball cricket at the international stage.
