Licence to kill: Gautam Gambhir's advice to Varun Chakravarthy

Spinner Varun Chakravarthy, who picked 5/17 in his four overs in India’s failed bid to defend 124 against South Africa in the second of the four T20 Internationals on Sunday, has attributed the new-found confidence in his ability to national team coach Gautam Gambhir’s advice.

Chakravarthy has played under Gambhir at the Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League (IPL) and was recently with him during India’s series with Bangladesh.  

“We played the Bangladesh series, he (Gambhir) was coaching the team. Definitely we spoke a lot and he gave me a lot of clarity about my role. He said, ‘Even if you go for 30-40 runs, doesn’t matter, your role is to pick wickets’. The clarity he gave me really helped me,” said Chakravarthy after India lost the second match by three wickets at Gqeberha. India had won the first match at Durban by 61 runs.

That license to be aggressive helped him in Sunday’s game. He had been struggling to return to India team after the first-round exit from the 2021 T20 World Cup.

He got back to the Indian cricket team last month in the October 6 game against Bangladesh at Gwalior, picking three wickets to cement his place in the team.

“The last three years were little tough and the only thing I could do was play lots of cricket and what I did was play lots of domestic cricket league in India. That is what helped me understand the game better. Have to be aggressive,” he added.

“Because we play IPL, we get to play 14-18 matches. You get to play all sorts of games, nail-biters, close games, matches with 200-plus scores. You get to play different kinds of matches.”

He added that doing well against the Proteas helps him gain in confidence.

“125 (124) was a low score and we fought. If we are able to play with same intensity, we’ll pull off something amazing.”

Tags : Indian cricket team, South Africa, Varun Chakravarthy, Gautam Gambhir, Coach, Bangladesh, IPL