Varun Chakaravarthy, an Indian cricket player, had a rough time playing at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium back in 2021. He didn’t take any wickets in three games during the T20 World Cup. But on Sunday, March 02, 2025, he showed how much he’s improved. In his first game of the 2025 Champions Trophy against New Zealand, he started off shaky by dropping an easy catch. A “wicket” in cricket means getting an opponent out, and he missed a chance early on.
But Varun turned things around fast. He bowled so well that he got five New Zealand players out all by himself! His bowling score was written as 10-0-42-5, which means he bowled 10 sets of balls (called overs), didn’t let the other team score off any of those sets easily, gave up 42 runs, and took 5 wickets. Thanks to him, India won the game by 44 runs and finished first in their group, winning every match they played. Now, they’ll face Australia in the next round, called the semifinal, on Tuesday.
India had a total score of 249 runs to defend, which means New Zealand had to beat that to win. Varun, who’s from Tamil Nadu and took the place of another player named Harshit Rana, tricked the New Zealand batters with his spinning balls. A spinner is a type of bowler who makes the ball twist in the air or bounce funny to confuse the batter. Varun proved he deserved to be on the team.
Before that, India batted first and made their 249 runs, even though they lost nine players. Shreyas Iyer scored 79 runs, and Hardik Pandya added 45 runs near the end to help the team. When New Zealand batted, they struggled against India’s spin bowlers. Only their best player, Kane Williamson, scored a lot—81 runs—but it wasn’t enough. The rest of the team couldn’t figure out Varun’s tricky bowling.
Hardik got the first big breakthrough by getting a New Zealand player, Rachin Ravindra, out. Then Varun got Will Young out by making him hit the ball into his own stumps (the sticks behind him). Other Indian bowlers, Kuldeep Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja, got more players out too. Varun really shined later, getting two strong New Zealand players, Glenn Phillips and Michael Bracewell, out in back-to-back overs. They didn’t see his “googly” coming—a special spin ball that goes the opposite way they expect—and got hit on their legs, which means they were out. After another Indian bowler, Axar Patel, got Williamson out, Varun finished off the last few players to get his first set of five wickets in only his second one-day international (ODI) game. An ODI is a type of cricket match that lasts one day.
Earlier, India’s batting started badly. New Zealand’s Matt Henry got two Indian players out early, leaving India at 30 runs with three players gone. Even Virat Kohli, a big star playing his 300th ODI, only scored 11 runs before getting out. He hit the ball, but New Zealand’s Glenn Phillips made an amazing catch by diving to grab it.
Shreyas Iyer and Axar Patel (who scored 42) then worked together to fix things, adding 98 runs as a team. Shreyas hit some big shots, including a few that went super far for six runs each, before getting out to a fast, high ball from Will O’Rourke. At one point, India was struggling at 182 runs with six players out, but Hardik stepped up in the last part of the game to push the score to 249.
In the end, Varun’s awesome bowling and the team’s effort made sure India won and stayed on top!
