IND vs SA: Varun Chakravarthy breaks Ravi Ashwin and Ravi Bishnoi's Indian T20I record

Varun Chakravarthy has marked a stunning comeback to the Indian T20I team.

Fairytale comebacks don’t come much sweeter than Varun Chakravarthy’s return to the Indian T20I team after three years. Not only he’s done extremely well on his comeback to the side, he’s not made a really strong case to be selected in the first-choice XI.

Having managed just two wickets in his career’s first six T20Is in 2021 at a terrible average of 66, Chakravarthy has been on a roll on his comeback. In six matches, he’s snared 15 wickets at an average of only 11.26, striking every 9.6 deliveries.

In three matches against Bangladesh at home, he snapped five wickets; he’s been even more destructive against South Africa.

In three outings against the Proteas, the Tamil Nadu mystery spinner has picked up 10 wickets at an average of merely 9.60. This includes his maiden T20I five-wicket haul that kept India alive in the Gqeberha T20I while defending a low total of 124 runs.

Varun Chakravarthy creates a record for India in bilateral T20Is

During the ongoing IND vs SA T20I series, Chakravarthy, with 10 wickets in three games, broke the record for most wickets by an Indian bowler in a bilateral T20I series. This record was previously held by Ravi Ashwin (against Sri Lanka in 2016) and Ravi Bishnoi (against Australia in 2023), who both took nine wickets each.

This achievement further highlights how largely clueless the South African batsmen have been against the spin-trickery of Chakravarthy in this series.

There is still one more match to go, which will be played in Johannesburg on Friday evening.

After his five-for in Gqeberha, Varun Chakravarthy revealed the changes he made to his bowling while he was out of the Indian team for three years.

He said, “I had to go to the drawing board and check out all my videos and what I figured out was that I was bowling side-spin, and it was not working out in the higher level, so I had to change everything about my bowling.

“It took me two years and I started bowling that in the local leagues, TNPL, Syed Mushtaq Ali [Trophy], Vijay Hazare [Trophy] and IPL also. It worked out there, so I’ve started bowling it in the international stage and it’s working out for me.”

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