Moody: 'Chakravarthy has grown in confidence with the team'
He feels Gambhir has a a certain role clarity for Chakravarthy in the KKR bowling unit
"How are you feeling?"
These were the first words of Varun Chakravarthy's personal coach to the spinner after he had a bad night at the Eden Gardens, where Punjab Kings pulled off a world-record chase of 262 against Kolkata Knight Riders. It was his worst spell, in terms of economy rate, in T20 cricket.
Jonny Bairstow alone hit Varun for 25 off nine balls, including three sixes, on an easy-paced, bash-through-the-line pitch surrounded by small boundaries. At least two of those sixes were mis-hits and most certainly one was parried over the boundary. Varun, however, wasn't too fussed about it and embraced the chaotic nature of T20 cricket.
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"I bowled well, but I was just slightly unlucky," AC Prathiban, the former Tamil Nadu and Puducherry spinner who works closely with Varun, recalls his charge telling him matter-of-factly after that game.
Prathiban was particularly impressed with Varun's maturity and game-awareness after a chastening outing. Having quickly put that Bairstow blitz behind him, Varun has picked up 12 wickets in five innings since at a strike rate of 9.5 and economy rate of under six. In a rain-hit game against Mumbai Indians at the same venue, where he had been expensive against PBKS earlier, Varun came away with 4-0-17-2, including the prized scalp of Rohit Sharma.
"Varun hasn't changed [his game] much," Prathiban says. "In one game, the ball lands five yards beyond the boundary; in the other it lands five yards inside the boundary and is caught. Like the [Heinrich] Klaasen wicket in the first qualifier on a bigger ground in Ahmedabad. This IPL season has had many 200-plus totals, and it has been an eye-opener for many bowlers. Varun hasn't panicked and it's his game-awareness that makes him a match-winner."