NEW DELHI: For a cricketer who made his international debut at 29, Varun Chakravarthy measures time differently.Now, at 35, he has just lived through a rollercoaster year: a T20 World Cup title on home soil where he finished as India’s joint-highest wicket-taker with 14 wickets, an IPL campaign played through hairline fractures in his left hand and toe, and then the first muscle injury of his career that forced him into weeks of rehabilitation.Yet, ask him where he stands in his journey, and his answer is strikingly uncomplicated.“At this stage of my career, I still feel I’m in my first half of my career because I started cricket very late. So I still feel there’s a long way to go,” Chakaravarthy said in an interaction with TimesofIndia.com, facilitated by equipment manufacturer ASICS.It is an outlook that perhaps explains Chakravarthy’s unconventional rise better than any statistic. The Tamil Nadu spinner has never been one for grand declarations or five-year plans. In a sport as volatile as T20 cricket, he prefers chasing the next small improvement rather than the next milestone.Now fully recovered from the Grade 2 left hamstring injury he suffered during the England T20I series, Chakravarthy returns just in time for a busy stretch: three T20Is against Afghanistan, a historic one-off international against Japan, and the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, where defending champions India begin directly from the quarterfinals.
Learning a new kind of injury
Until this summer, pain had always arrived the same way for Chakravarthy, through collisions, impact or bad luck.A torn muscle was unfamiliar territory.“This is actually my first ever muscle injury. So all of my injuries have been impact injuries and other accidents that have happened on field. The expertise at CoE helped me and people helped me to gain my confidence. Every person working there helped me,” he explained.Recovery meant long days at the BCCI Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru, where rebuilding confidence became as important as rebuilding strength. The rehabilitation, too, was relentless.“Definitely, I spent a lot of time there and did a lot of running and did a lot of strength training, which helped me.”For a bowler whose craft depends on rhythm as much as deception, returning isn’t simply about being medically fit. It’s about trusting the body enough to express the imagination that makes him so difficult to read.“Yeah, it will take some time to gain confidence. But once you gain confidence, you just start becoming more expressive and that’s how it is,” reasoned the 35-year-old.Rather than treating injury lay-offs as wasted time, Chakravarthy sees them as opportunities to work on parts of the game that competition rarely allows.“When you’re away, you can start sharpening your skills. You can upskill yourself, which you don’t get much time to do when you’re playing continuously.”
Why shoes matter more than mystery
Mystery spin is often associated with wrists, fingers and release points. Chakravarthy begins somewhere else entirely: the feet.His partnership with ASICS may be commercial, but his relationship with the brand predates the endorsement. He says he had already switched to their shoes around 2022 before formally signing a deal in January 2026.More revealing is how clinically he breaks down footwear.“For a bowler, shoes are the biggest equipment they can have. Batters, they have many other equipments, but for a bowler, it’s the shoes only,” said Varun.“As a spinner, your feet start becoming little broader as in it starts changing shape once you pivot because the spinners have to pivot more after landing. So broad shoes in the toe area that is very important,” he added.Add a supportive heel counter and lighter weight, he says, and you’ve got the essentials of a spinner’s toolkit.It’s the kind of detail that reflects Chakravarthy’s evolution from architect to elite cricketer: analytical, process-driven and constantly searching for marginal gains.
The curiosity beyond cricket
The Asian Games, which begin on September 19, offer something even ICC events cannot — a sporting village shared with athletes from dozens of disciplines. For Chakravarthy, that might be the biggest attraction.“It’s my first time in Japan. I’ve never been to Japan and any games also. So all I’ve played is ICC tournaments and ACC tournaments,” said Chakravarthy, his excitement quite evident in his voice.“I’m very much looking forward to meeting other athletes also from other different sports and all those things.”“I want to see how a 100-metre athlete prepares himself, how a badminton professional prepares himself or herself,” he went on to state.In India’s increasingly packed cricket calendar, opportunities for cross-pollination are rare. The Asian Games provide a window into sporting cultures that cricketers seldom experience.That openness may also prove useful on the field. The pitches at Korogi Sports Park are expected to differ from familiar Indian surfaces, and Chakravarthy believes adaptability will define the bowling attack’s success more than preconceived plans
