Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) spinner Varun Chakravarthy on Monday (October 26) received a maiden Indian T20I call up for the Australia tour and Indian batting legend Sunil Gavaskar asserted the cricketer deserves his chance at the highest level given his hard work and IPL 2020 show.
Tamil Nadu’s mystery spinner was rewarded a maiden call-up to India’s T20I squad for the much-anticipated Australia tour in November for his brilliant performance in the ongoing IPL 2020.
The wily spinner, who has been making life difficult for batsmen with his control and variations off the pitch and in the air, in the IPL 13, has scalped 13 wickets so far for KKR in the 11 matches in the league.
Last Saturday, Varun also became the first bowler to pick up a 5-wicket haul in IPL 13 when he destroyed Delhi Capitals' strong middle-order with figures of 5/20 in 4 overs in their last IPL 13 outing.
Well, before becoming a talk about personality among the fans and cricket fraternity, the 29-year-old had almost given up on cricket after opting a career in architecture despite being an ardent cricket follower when he had to make a career choice.
However, 2 years into his job as a freelancer, Varun decided to give another shot at a career in cricket and started off his career in competitive cricket as a fast bowler, but an injury forced him to take up spin in the 2017-18 season and since then, he never looked back.
Gavaskar, former India captain, lauded Chakravarthy's journey and said his story reminds us that one can realize even some surreal dreams with hard work while claiming India call-up was a reward for some fine performances in the ongoing IPL 2020 in the UAE.
Speaking to Star Sports, Gavaskar said: “It does put a smile on my face (his story). It just tells you dreams do come true. He had given up and again restarted, he wanted to become a fast bowler. Through all those things, you must believe in yourself and your dreams come true.”
He signed off by saying, “Chakravarthy is there not just for his five-for but the way he has bowled throughout the entire tournament. He has not given so many runs, he has picked up wickets at crucial times in the middle overs. He has not allowed the batsmen to settle down against him at all. Clearly, reward for some fine performances in the IPL.”
Here’s India's T20I squad for the Australia tour:
Virat Kohli (Captain), Shikhar Dhawan, Mayank Agarwal, KL Rahul (vice-captain and wicket-keeper), Shreyas Iyer, Manish Pandey, Hardik Pandya, Sanju Samson (wicket-keeper), Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar, Yuzvendra Chahal, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd. Shami, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Varun Chakravarthy
