Varun Chakravarthy in the 1st IPL match

In the inaugural match of the IPL 2025, Varun Chakravarthy had a bad day. He went for 43 runs in 4 overs with 1 wicket. Not what one would expect from a home side bowler. The context is also important here. KKR batters did not do justice to how good the pitch was to bat on. Or, Krunal Pandya didn’t let them. So KKR did not have enough runs to defend. But there were enough runs to not make it look like a cakewalk. That too, if I may add, against RCB. A lot was dependent on their premier spinner but he went for far too many runs. What happened to the mystery magic of Varun?

The first thing one needs to check while assessing a bowler is length. In T20s, one can be fairly certain that the bowler would not have bowled too many off-length balls. Varun usually operates in 4 to 7 metres length. That is what he did in this match as well. The lines too didn’t look too off. Then what happened?

I heard Ravi Shastri saying on comms that Varun was not getting as much drift as he usually gets. Drift is the side-ways movement of the ball in the air. It is similar to swing in pace bowling. Like pace bowling, there are effectively two types of lateral movements in spin as well. Drift is the sideways movement of the ball in the air, and turn is the movement of the ball off the pitch. Each, drift and turn, is a function of the revs given to the ball, seam position, and speed. Apart from this, drift also depends upon the moisture in the air (I have only heard this from commentators. Haven’t read from any reliable source yet. Please feel free to share if you get one); and turn depends upon the moisture on the pitch. Drier the pitch, more turn it is expected to offer.

Let’s see how Varun handles these movements. He is glibly called a mystery spinner. There is little mystery in the direction of drift he generates. For example, 93% of his balls drift into the right hand batters. The mystery, of course, is about the turn. It is difficult to tell which of his deliveries will turn away from the right hand batters and which ones will come in. 62% of his deliveries deviate from their original path in the direction away from the right hand batters. The batter might still see the ball come into him but the degree of it would be less. Since he bowls it 62% of the time, this might as well be called his stock delivery. On this delivery, he concedes 1.44 runs per ball. The remaining 38% deliveries, after pitching, which we can call his variation balls for lack of a better word, come or turn into the right hand batters. On these deliveries, he concedes only 1.12 runs per ball.

Clearly, the variation ball works better for him. How many such deliveries did he bowl in the inaugural match? He bowled 19 deliveries to right hand batters (Kohli and Salt) and conceded 40 runs. Out of these, only 2 were his variation balls. He conceded a single on one of these balls and the other one was hit for a six. What would have happened if he had bowled more of these?

This brings us to what Ravi Shastri said. Varun’s ball wasn’t drifting much. Well, only the one turning into the right hand batters. The degree of drift and turn also matters. The variation ball that went for six drifted in by only 0.74 degrees and turned by 0.28 degrees. But was that the case with all the balls? Let’s look at how much the balls drifted and turned in this match as compared to the previous ones.

The table below shows the average drift Varun gets in Eden Gardens -

This shows that Varun got more drift than usual (32%) for his stock (going out) delivery. And the drift he got for his variation (coming in) was also no less than what he usually gets at Eden Gardens. So, if degree of drift was clearly not the problem. Then the problem must be turn.

Let’s look at the degree of turn. The table below shows the average degree of turn off the pitch Varun gets at Eden Gardens -

If you were expecting a surprise here, sorry to disappoint. The turn on offer was indeed much less than what Varun usually gets at Eden Gardens. There was one ball spun by >2 degrees and turned by >3 degrees. It was the ball on which Phil Salt got out.

What else could Varun have done to rectify it? By the time he must have realised that there was no turn on offer, it must have been too late. He had conceded 21 runs in his first over. It’s very difficult to recover from that. The remaining 3 went for only 22 runs which is remarkable recovery. He did vary his speed but the damage was already done.

T20 is a game of small margins. A couple of extra boundaries and a bowler’s impact on the match plummets from very good to below average . Varun is an excellent spinner and on another day he could have gotten away with the pitch not being supportive. But that has to be some other day.