Indian spinner Varun Chakravarthy bowled a match-winning spell on Wednesday by picking up three wickets against England in Kolkata at the Eden Gardens. The batters could not pick his googlies and were bamboozled by them. The visitors where reeling at 65/2 before Chakravarthy came in and picked both Harry Brook and Liam Livingstone in a single over to turn the match around.
“Chakravarthy is a lovely mystery spinner – kind of brings the ball back into the right-handers. Every now and again, he will just hold one up. He’s not a huge spinner of the ball, but just does enough, which makes it very difficult – always brings the stumps into play. He is very consistent and also very smart. England have got to find a different method of trying to put him under pressure,” former England cricketer Michael Vaughan said on Cricbuzz.
In addition to Brook and Livingstone, Chakravarthy also picked up England skipper Jos Buttler who was batting well. “I am used to seeing such pitches in the IPL. I know that it is for the seamers but I know there are certain lengths which is helpful for me. I am trying to keep it away from their arc, it was holding a bit To bowl to batsmen like Jos and other guys is definitely challenging. What I realised was, I can’t beat batsmen with side-spin. the only way I can beat the batsmen is through bounce. I’m still 7 on 10, still more work to do,” said Chakravarthy after winning the Player Of The Match.
In addition to Chakravarthy, Axar Patel too picked a couple of wickets but it wasn’t a surface which was turning square and the Indian batters in second innings looked quite comfortable batting on it. “Today, it didn’t really spin a great deal, so they’ve got a bit of work to do with the way that they combat spin and try to find a way of not only just surviving but scoring. In T20 cricket, you’ve got to find that counter-punch to put bowlers under pressure,” Vaughan further said.
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