Varun took a beating while Arora ran drinks when 262 were chased down against KKR; little did anyone envisage the duo to lead their playoffs push next game
Shashank Kishore30-Apr-20242:27
Review: Varun, Arora or Salt, who was KKR’s biggest star?
The Eden Gardens has given bowlers a million reasons to stop believing. What’s even the point when you’re simply being carted around like in Stick Cricket for ridiculous scores? Three nights ago, Kolkata Knight Riders failed to defend 262.While Varun Chakravarthy was walloped for 46 in three wicketless overs by Jonny Bairstow and Shashank Singh, Vaibhav Arora ran the drinks. You couldn’t have faulted Arora even if he thought he was lucky to have been spared. You also couldn’t have envisaged the two coming together in the next game to have a serious impact on KKR’s push to the playoffs.Arora set the tempo with his powerplay salvo and Varun did what many expected of him when he was one of their big-ticket retentions: befuddle Delhi Capitals batters with turn and fox them through subtle variations in length on an Eden Gardens surface that offered just a little more than it did against the Kings.
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Arora was swinging it from left to right, something even Mitchell Starc hadn’t quite managed to do this IPL. This was his first opportunity in two weeks, and in his first over, he laid down the marker when he bowled the perfect bouncer aimed at Shai Hope’s head. Hope was surprised by the zip off the pitch and was momentarily thrown off guard as he tried to get inside the line. But he was fortuitous as the ball flew off the top edge over fine leg for six.Related
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You almost heard Arora wonder aloud if there was any justice left in the game for the bowlers. But he quickly came back with a ball every fast bowler manifests. It swerved in to hit the perfect length and straightened to square up Hope. As the off stump was knocked over, Arora belted out a roar and took off on a celebratory run.Arora’s magic was spread across these two deliveries. Maybe the bumper caused a split-second indecision in Hope’s footwork; enough for the ball to do its thing. It left DC 37 for 3 inside four overs; their top-three of Jake Fraser-McGurk, owner of two 15-ball half-centuries, Prithvi Shaw, who edged Arora down leg, and Hope were all back.Vaibhav Arora roars after making a mess of Shai Hope’s stumps•BCCIIt was Arora’s seventh powerplay wicket that took him to the top of the charts jointly during that phase, with Khaleel Ahmed and Trent Boult. It was a joyous return against a side that he had dented with a three-for when they last met.”My strength is to bowl with the new ball,” Arora said later when asked to look back at Hope’s dismissal. “I hit an outswinger, it cut away. I felt I executed well. I landed a perfect length and got the wicket.”At his best, Arora can swing the ball prodigiously, but unlike a Bhuvneshwar Kumar or Sandeep Sharma, he also has the ability to rush batters, like it was against Hope. This extra pace may have added a little bit of oomph to his bowling that was non-existent until a few years ago.Arora featured in only five games for KKR last year and has had a handful this season. But compelling performances like these will keep him in the fray for more opportunities heading into the business end of the competition.
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Varun is more seasoned than Arora and knows all too well the spotlight can draw you out very quickly from superstardom. He was seen as the mystery element in India’s T20 World Cup squad in 2021, but finds himself out of conversations even as the squad selection for this year’s edition is upon us.When he was retained, Varun was expected to do a job Sunil Narine had shouldered for over eight seasons. In some ways, the move may have been perceived from the outside as the passing over of the baton. But here he was, in the middle of 2024, a little low on confidence, going at an economy of 9.72 while having picked just eight wickets in as many games.On Friday night, Narine bowled his four overs for 24. With a bit more support from the other end, Kings may have failed to get over the line. Varun revealed he was hurting and needed to bounce back quickly.Varun Chakravarthy finished with 3 for 16•AFP/Getty ImagesDC’s decision to bat first played into KKR’s hands. All told, this wasn’t a surface straight out of their blueprint from 2012-2014, where spin to win was an unwritten rule under Gautam Gambhir. Back then, Gambhir had a peak Narine whose four overs were almost a write off for teams, but on Monday, there was enough help for the spinners who knew where to land the ball.Varun bowled 15 off his 24 deliveries on a length on the stumps or just outside off, hardly allowing batters to get underneath the flight. The bite off the pitch was considerable, which he could’ve profited from first ball had Harshit Rana not let off Rishabh Pant’s miscued slog at short third. But Varun had the last laugh in the next over when he had Pant miscuing another slog, this time to Shreyas Iyer at cover.The fizz of his release seemed all too evident, as was the confidence. He was landing those back-of-the-hand leg-cutters to the T, and Tristan Stubbs fell to one of them as he misread the length and nicked behind attempting a cut. When he dismissed Kumar Kushagra with a skiddy wrong’un, the entire range of his repertoire was on display. He ended with 3 for 16 off his four overs, quite a turnaround from three nights ago when he was taken to the cleaners.”The last game was a hard pill to swallow,” Varun said. “This pitch was holding a bit, as the game progressed it was turning more. The ball I bowled to Pant [which was dropped] was a better ball than the one that got him out, but I liked the Stubbs wicket a lot more.”What did he do between the previous game and this?”Shah Rukh [ Khan, team owner] came up to me and had a chat,” Varun said at the press conference. “He said, ‘don’t take this [attack on the bowlers this IPL] personally. Don’t have self-doubts’. The last game hurt, so this was a good performance from my side.”Was there a quiet chat somewhere with Narine? “Just silence,” Varun laughed.With a spell like that, probably even the most animated character in the dugout would’ve been at a loss of words. There couldn’t have been a better example than this of ‘allowing the ball to do all the talking’.
