Varun Chakravarthy and Salman Butt | Image Source: Twitter
Varun Chakravarthy was not even half of what he was in Indian Premier League while playing for India against Pakistan in the T20 World Cup. Chakravarthy ended the match with figures of 0/33 and former Pakistan captain Salman Butt said that his failure in the match was due to the fact that the batsmen from Pakistan are used to playing this style of bowling.
“Varun Chakravarthy may be a mystery bowler but he was no surprise to us. Kids in Pakistan play a lot of tape ball cricket. Every kid in Pakistan plays this kind of bowling in street cricket, where bowlers do the finger tricks with the ball and try different variations,” the ex-Pakistan captain said on his Youtube channel.
Here it is worth mentioning that India picked Chakravarthy ahead of the experienced Ravichandran Ashwin for the mega clash against Pakistan in Dubai.
Chakravarthy was expected to be India’s main threat with the ball against Pakistan, considering his ‘mystery’ spin in the recent past. His skills were also compared to the likes of Sri Lanka’s Ajantha Mendis.
“At the start of his career, Sri Lanka’s Ajantha Mendis also troubled a lot of teams with his mystery element. But his record against Pakistan isn’t great. After a while, Sri Lanka stopped playing him against India. We have never found any mystery in mystery bowling because we have grown up playing such kind of bowlers,” Butt further added.
Butt even went on to say that if India had learned their lessons from the Dubai’s massive defeat, they wouldn’t play someone like a Chakravarthy against Pakistan again.
“I don’t think India will play Chakravarthy against Pakistan again and, if they do, expect the result to be the same. Just by looking at someone like Varun, Pakistan’s batters can figure out whether the ball is going to come in or go out. Whoever, the Indian analyst is, perhaps he wasn’t aware of the fact that the one who introduced mystery spin in world cricket, Mendis, wasn’t successful against Pakistan at all,” he added.
