Varun Chakravarthy who turned out to be the surprise package bagging a staggering contract of Rs 8.4 crore.
While top names like Yuvraj Singh, Brendon McCullum and Martin Guptill found no takers in the first round of the 2019 IPL auction, Varun Chakravarthy, a mystery spinner from Tamil Nadu grabbed a deal of Rs 8.4 crore with Preity Zinta co-owned Punjab.
Varun started playing cricket at the age of 13 and has seven variations – offbreak, legbreak, googly, carrom ball, flipper, top spinner and slider.
After TNPL he entered Vijay Cricket Club’s squad in first division of the Chennai League and his team clinched the 50-over VAP trophy. He was also called up to the 50-over Vijay Hazare Trophy and was the top wicket-taker in the group stage with 22 wickets and had an economy rate of 4.23.
Chakravarthy’s rise in the Indian domestic cricket has been meteoric. The mystery spinner from Tamil Nadu could spark a bidding war for his services following impressive performances in the TNPL and the Vijay Hazare Trophy. IN TNPL, he recorded an unbelievable economy rate of 4.7 from 10 T20 matches. He has already taken 22 wickets Tamil Nadu in limited-overs cricket in nine matches.He also made his Ranji Trophy debut for Tamil Nadu. At the Mumbai Indians trials, he showed a proclivity to bowl in the Powerplays
Chakravarthy bagged a contract of Rs 8.40 crore which was 42 times more than his base price of Rs 20 lakhs. Initially, Chennai Super Kings and Delhi Capitals were also engaged in a bidding war from him but it was KXIP who eventually got their man. It will be interesting to see how the young spinner performs next season.
