Darwish Rasooli barely had time to read the ball before it had read him. The last delivery of the seventh over, in Afghanistan’s first T20I against India, arrived looking like a stock leg-break.
It wasn’t. A googly, perhaps? Still negative. It was a slider – one that slid, true to its self-explanatory nomenclature, through his gates. It was the first hint of Varun Chakaravarthy discovering – or rather, re-discovering – his mojo.
No bowler took more wickets than Chakaravarthy at this year’s ICC Men’s T20 World Cup. No Indian bowler had taken more T20I wickets than him last year, or come even remotely close – the nearest, Kuldeep Yadav with 21 wickets, being 15 shy of his 36. gainst that backdrop, the two games in England stood out as an aberration – seven overs, 72 runs, a single wicket to show for it.
And yet, the leg-spinner affirmed he was content with his bowling in England, despite his numbers not doing justice to his caliber. The reason, he says, comes down to process over outcome.
“I cannot go by results. If I go by results, I will start reacting to each and every thing. If it goes my way I will start feeling very happy, if it doesn’t go my way I will become very sad. I cannot go that way. So the best way for me is to see the process. If it’s a good ball and if it still goes for a 6 I will always take it. But if it’s a bad ball and it’s a wicket, I have to work on it. That’s how it goes,” he said at the post-match press conference following his team convincing seven-wicket triumph.
‘For a bowler, though, is wicket not the only currency worth value?’ Varun is asked by this newspaper. He has a rejoinder ready.
“It is not all about wickets. It’s about if I’m bowling in the right place or not. Whatever happens after that, it’s not in my control. So, what’s in my control, still I pitch the ball. After the ball pitches, the ball can turn, or it cannot turn. It’s not in my control. I’ll see till that point (where the ball pitches). If it is still that (where he wants it to be), I am fine with it.”
On being asked about his performance in England, he said: “The thing is England too was also good for me, it’s just that we didn’t win. It doesn’t mean that it has gone for waste. We get to learn a lot from that (the losses) also. There is nothing that goes waste and as I said, today even if things wouldn’t have gone our way, we would have had the same mindset as to learn something. So every match is a learning and the results sometimes come our way, sometimes it doesn’t.”
At the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Sunday, Varun recorded figures of 4-0-16-1. Afghanistan’s innings, built around a total of 156 for 8, featured 18 boundaries – not one of them off Chakaravarthy’s bowling. It was also the second-most economical four-over spell of his career.
What would please him the most, though, is the process that bore fruit.