Varun Chakravarthy didn’t play his first senior match for Tamil Nadu until September 2018, when he was 27. His first outing for India came just before he turned 30 and a storied cricketing career seemed to have passed him by when, after taking a mere two wickets in his first six T20Is, he was relegated to the wilderness for nearly three years.

A bushel of wickets, primarily alongside Sunil Narine for Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL, catalysed Chakravarthy’s India comeback in October 2024 and the architect from Tamil Nadu hasn’t looked back. In the last 15-and-a-half months, Varun has supplanted Jasprit Bumrah as the country’s most potent T20 weapon with a staggering 61 wickets in 30 innings, repeatedly reaffirming his class and quality.