Anatomy of a fall: Has the Varun Chakravarthy mystery finally been solved?

Two months ago, Varun would have been the clear winner if you conducted a poll on who the best T20 spinner in the world was. Indeed, he was the ICC's No.1-ranked bowler in the format between September 14, 2025 and March 1, 2026. A career-best rating of 818 achieved in December put him eighth on the all-time list, and first among Indians.

But ever since South Africa got hold of him in India's loss to the Proteas at the T20 World Cup, his figures have made for grim reading; in seven games across T20Is and the IPL, he has conceded at over 10 runs per over on six occasions. The exception came against Zimbabwe where he took 1-35 in four overs as India were defending a 250-plus score.

Is this simply a form blip, or something wider to worry about?

Exploration 1: Varun's lengths

Indian great Erapalli Prasanna is credited with the quote, "Line is optional, length is mandatory." While he spoke about first-class cricket, this is largely true of spinners in the shortest format as well. Lines can often depend on boundary dimensions and field sets, while "hitting a good length" remains relatively consistent across surfaces and match situations.

Naturally, the first place to look would be at Varun's lengths.

The immediate observation is clear. Since the T20 World Cup, his lengths have been a tad shorter; the biggest change is his operation on back of a length rather than the good length itself.

This may appear to be a major shift, but comes with a caveat; the shift from length to back of a length here is only about a metre or so, from a 5m to 6m length – not quite so major. Varun has still largely operated within the same band as previously.

Kolkata Knight Riders head coach Abhishek Nayar echoed that sentiment ahead of KKR's first home game of the season: "He's pretty much bowled the similar speeds which he always bowled. Interestingly, Hawkeye suggests he's bowling the same lengths. But sometimes, players play you better than what you're doing. In a lot of ways, there is always something you're thinking at (about)."

The second half of Nayar's statement will become relevant soon. But for now, far more instructive (and interesting) than the distribution of Varun's lengths are his returns on them, shown in the following in the table.

There is a slight uptick in his economy rate just short of a length, but not by nearly enough to explain the extent of how outsized his recent performances have been. More importantly, on a good length, Varun's economy rate has nearly doubled, from 7.6 to 14.4 runs an over, across a not-so-small sample size of 61 balls. The effect of this has been quite incredible when you combine it with the data on his distribution of lengths.

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Essentially, over the past couple of months, Varun has actually tended towards back of a length bowling that traditionally – and still – enables him to contain runs. But the good length has become nearly un-bowlable because of the severity of punishment there, giving him virtually no room for error.

From Varun's perspective, the problem is clear; he has not lost his length. He is starting to get hit from lengths that until now, worked for him.

But if his length is not the problem, what is?

Exploration 2: How batters play Varun

From investigating his lengths, we can largely zoom in on Varun's deliveries on a good length. After all, that is the one length that is now being carted all over the place, and seems to have the biggest effect on his skyrocketing economy.

Examining opposition batters' footwork against him paints quite a clear picture.

Since the start of the World Cup, there has been a significant redistribution in batters' footwork against Varun's good length balls. The proportion of deliveries played on the back foot has been halved, with increases in batters backing away from the stumps and looking to play him off the front foot. Their shot choices are also interesting; across the same time period split, 36 per cent of Varun's length balls have been driven, compared to 21 per cent in the year prior.

As a matter of fact, the same trends holds for his back-of-length deliveries, to a lesser extent – only natural as the slightly shorter length would lend itself more to back foot play.

There is a two-fold explanation for why this shift has happened. Much of Varun's success over the last 18 months or so has been driven by his googly, delivered out of the side of the hand and incredibly difficult to pick. As far as batters are concerned, this poses two challenges in particular.

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One, right-handers had the ball angling and drifting in to them constantly, cramping them for room. Varun could do this to left-handers by coming around the wicket as well. Two, his tendency to apply more overspin than sidespin on the ball meant he could get it to 'kick' up after bouncing, hitting high on the bat or getting a top edge.

There seems to have been a gradual working out from batters, on how to combat this. As Dewald Brevis did in Ahmedabad, backing away from the stumps enables them to free their arms and avoid the cramping. Looking to actively play off the front foot, theoretically, means getting to the pitch of the ball before it really has time to bounce and cause a mis-hit. Additionally, getting forward helps batters to meet the ball when it is lower, enabling them to "get under it", and swing more freely.

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Both of these avenues are helped by the fact that Varun is not a big turner of the ball; he will rarely spin a leg break past the right-hander's outside edge, for example. His speeds, generally in the 95-100 kmph range, may also help batters with clarity of thought. Essentially, treat him like a medium pacer who angles it in.

Exploration 3: A crisis of confidence?

In the year leading up to the World Cup, Varun's googly earned him 30 wickets at an average of 11.7 and economy rate of 6.7. Since then, the figures read 11 wickets at 12.8, and 7.8 runs per over. That is a slight dip, but not too bad at all.

However, there are two trends to keep an eye on. The first is a decrease in the share of googlies he lands on a good length; his leg break has taken over as the dominant delivery type here. Essentially, Varun is bowling his best delivery on one of his better lengths less often than before.

The 'why' behind this is unknown, and will be something only the player could be aware of. But there is one potential explanation.

Batters have begun to combat the two main effects of Varun's googly. As the data shows, there is a slight increase in his economy rate. But in the bowler's head, it is possible his perception of that increase is worse than the reality.

In turn, he may gradually be losing faith in the effectiveness of that delivery. After all, that is still in his control – what the batters do is not. A good test of this theory is in the following graphic – Varun's delivery types on the ball immediately following a boundary.

Even though Varun has largely had a slight preference for his leg break after being hit, that has grown significantly in the past couple of months, a possible side effect of him noticing the way batters are attempting to counter the googly. The issue, of course, is that his leg break has never been as effective as the googly; it averaged 37.5 and went at 8.5 an over previously, and is now averaging 65.7 and going at 11.9 an over.

There has, to a certain extent, been a 'working out' of Varun, which in turn seems to feed into how he has structured his bowling in recent weeks.

For any other spinner, it might spell the end of the road; think someone like Ajantha Mendis. At 34 years old, Varun is no spring chicken either. But bear in mind that this has happened to him once before.

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In 2021, Varun reinvented himself after a wicketless outing at the T20 World Cup. "After the 2021 World Cup, I analysed my bowling and what I found was I was bowling more sidespin, and I wasn't being able to beat the batsmen through sidespin. I worked out that I need to beat them with bounce," he said to JioHotstar last year.

That tweak gave him a second wind, but the wheel of T20 cricket has now spun around to put him on the back foot again. Does he have one more trick up his sleeve? Rule that out at your own peril.

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