The Chennai that taught Varun about the all-is-lost moment

Movie-mad late bloomer Varun has turned every setback into lift-off, and on Thursday, Chennai's unlikely cricket royalty returns home as the No.1-ranked T20I bowler

Deivarayan Muthu and Alagappan Muthu

Feb 25, 2026, 6:21 AM • 7 hrs ago

Varun Chakravarthy is mad about movies.

There was a time that he wandered around Chennai with a guitar slung around his back. He was a teenager and had just seen Vaaranam Aayiram where one contributed to like 90% of the hero's drip.

Varun even attempted to get into the movie business. He has written entire scripts. In them, he would have imagined an all-is-lost moment. An important, often emotional, turning point that lays the protagonist low and sets up the rest of the film.

4-0-47-1 is not his.

But he's been there before.

Obviously, there is concern, prompted not merely by the loss that India sustained at the hands of South Africa but the manner in which it came about, where what they thought were their strengths - Varun's mystery spin, their top three's productivity - were rapidly undone, leaving their hopes of making the 2026 T20 World Cup semi-final in the balance. But there is another ICC trophy up for grabs in about 12 months. And this one goes back on the block in 2028. And so on and so on. It feels like the consequences of missing out on a title aren't as great as, say, almost dissolving your firm after one of its projects is waylaid by an act of god.

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The floods in Chennai in 2016 did a lot of damage to an area called Mogappair. Varun was working in a building there. By the way, this was a time when he thought he was a better architect than he was a bowler. He incurred significant financial losses.

This was a couple of years into the time when Varun found a great mentor and friend in KB Arun Karthik. Yep, that guy. He's fought for Varun. He's told him "cricket-ah vittrathe" [don't let cricket go] when Varun came back full of doubts from his first IPL, playing one game, bowling 18 balls and going for 35 runs.

He told his TNPL team owners in 2018 that if they didn't pick Varun in the player draft, he would stop playing for them. He tells us from watching Varun since 2014-15, "at the end of the day, it's all about bouncing back. If you press a spring hard, it bounces back even harder and I see Varun as that spring. You just have to keep working hard and Varun keeps working hard."

This is a bit of a change from the man he used to be. Flighty. Drawn to anything. Everything. Here is a(n incomplete) list of career choices he's considered

Architecture

Interior Designing

Music

Acting (cameo-ed in a 2014 Tamil movie called Jeeva)

Movie making

Movie editing

Even when Varun started playing cricket - this was in his mid-20s and it was the tennis-ball variety - his focus was split because people watching those games would've bet on something happening the next ball - INR 500 for a six, INR 200 for a four. An announcement would ring out over the loudspeaker. A game within a game would draw all the players in.

This is the part of the movie where the aimless hero crosses paths with a beautiful heroine. Falls for her. Tamil movie logic means it's love at first sight. He then goes completely overboard trying to learn everything about her. And should the feeling be mutual, it'd set him up with the confidence to do things that are completely bonkers.

A lack of strength to be a fast bowler had Varun looking at some of his friends showing off their carrom balls in roadside games. He learnt how to bowl one himself and then started on other variations. As he gained control over all of them, he sought someone out at Chennai Super Kings and, even though he was a fourth division player in the Tamil Nadu club scene at the time, demanded a net-bowling spot and didn't take no for an answer.

One year later, Punjab Kings came calling. In 2023, Stephen Fleming was all but crying. "It still hurts us, that [we could not buy him at the auction]."

"Varun's journey is almost like Dhoni's - in the sense that not many would have expected it and it's out of the box," Arun Karthik, who has played over 100 first-class games and now works in cricket commentary, told ESPNcricinfo. "I always have that brotherly feeling with Varun. He gave me a call last year when he was made Tamil Nadu's T20 captain, and now he's going to play a World Cup game at Chepauk, which makes me very proud.

"He's an example not just for players in Chennai but for players around the world that you can even emerge from even tennis-ball cricket and become World No. 1. There may have been Ajantha Mendis before, but to be this successful as a mystery spinner, I think Varun is the starter pack."

As he told R Ashwin on his YouTube show, Varun has wandered the length and breadth of Chennai, playing anywhere he could. Erikarai ground in Kotturpuram, Kozhipanna ground in Injambakkam, Alphonsa ground in Mandaveli and Somasundaram ground in T Nagar. He would attend team dinners still fiddling with the ball. He had one with him up on stage at his wedding.

Success didn't come right away. He got hurt in the IPL. He thought about quitting. He had good people around him to drag him out of that headspace. Failure when it came never stayed. He won the IPL. He got hurt in the T20 World Cup. He disappeared for a while. AC Prathiban and Abhishek Nayar had a hand in shaping him. He returned for the Champions Trophy. India won the title. Now he is royalty in Chennai.

When Varun was invited as a chief guest for a college event in the city last year, he was given the kind of reception that is usually reserved for movie stars. His influence is starting to extend beyond runs and wickets and wins.

Legspinner Karthik Meiyappan, who bagged a hat-trick in the 2022 T20 World Cup, has ended his UAE career and moved from Dubai to Chennai, hoping to break into the IPL through the TNPL like Varun did. B Rocky, a 32-year-old mystery spinner who has been Varun's understudy at various TNPL teams, has not played any senior cricket for Tamil Nadu, but has had a taste of the IPL as a net bowler for CSK. B Surya, also an uncapped mystery spinner, has moved up the hierarchy to bowl at the Royal Challengers Bengaluru nets.

"Whether you're 27 years old or 30, if you keep chasing your passion and dreams, Varun has showed you can make it," Arun Karthik said. What a fantastic story!"

In 2017, a man who wanted to put his stuff on TV wound up on it thanks to cricket. Varun was with Karaikudi Kaalai and they were playing a TNPL game at Chepauk which was being broadcast all over India. He stepped up at the fall of the fifth wicket. By the way, this was a time when he thought he was a better batter than he was a bowler. He took strike against Sai Kishore. Negotiated one ball safely. Was lbw to the next one.

So, a two-ball duck was the first impression he left on the wider cricket world, which probably doesn't qualify as an all-is-lost moment, but it has the potential to be a full circle moment. Nine years ago, Varun walked off his home ground with a zero next to his name. On Thursday, he will walk in with the ICC's No.1 rank next to his name.

Deivarayan Muthu and Alagappan Muthu are senior sub-editors at ESPNcricinfo.

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