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On the list of things human beings were put on this Earth to do, fast bowling won’t be very high up. Why would you want to be an express quick? Run in ball after ball, contort and extend your body in the riskiest, most exhausting ways, only to see the batter coyly leave the ball outside off or cheekily ramp you over the slips for six.
There are a select few whose mental wiring predisposes them to the art. And then, among those, there’s an incredibly exclusive club of people who have the skillset to bowl really fast. It can’t be taught. It can’t be watched and imbibed. It’s a blessing and a curse in equal measure, and those who choose to exercise it have to experience both sides of the coin.
At 35 years old, Varun Aaron certainly has. The strapping fast bowler from Jharkhand recently retired from all forms of representative cricket, bringing the curtains down on a career in which he represented India 18 times across two formats. During his explosive stint, Aaron also went where few have in the game of cricket and even fewer have in the country - he breached the 150kph mark with regularity.
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Off the field, Aaron is mild-mannered and cheery. His easygoing tone and frankness hide the fact that in his prime, he was one of the most fearsome fast bowlers the sport has ever seen. In an exclusive chat with Sportskeeda, he takes some time to reflect on what has been a true rollercoaster ride in every sense of the term.
How did Aaron start this journey? Two decades ago, when he was 14, he found himself at the MRF Pace Foundation, under the watchful eye of Aussie bowling legend Dennis Lillee. But the seeds of fast bowling were sown well before that.
“Obviously, the love for fast bowling has always been there. I think it mostly stems from a ‘go hard or go home’ kind of attitude, which was imbibed in me by my mom when I was growing up. She was an athlete herself in her state. My grandfather played hockey, and my dad pushed me a lot to not be lazy when I was a kid. From a very young age, that was instilled in me. When I met Dennis, talking to him about how he went about his business and learning from him was massive for me. I took to it. I understood that if you want to bowl quick, you have to enjoy it. And if you’re not willing to put everything on the field, it’s not worth it.”
But that comes with its fair share of tradeoffs and setbacks. Aaron says that he made up his mind he would bowl fast, even if it meant that he would spend more time off the field than on it. A touch ironically, it takes a strong man to do that.
“Yeah! Bowling fast gave me happiness," Aaron says. "Even if I’m on the field for only four-five months a year, I’m gonna bowl quick. After having eight stress fractures, if I wanted to slow down, I would have. I’m a firm believer that if god has given you a talent, you should make use of it. Not everybody gets the genes to bowl fast. You can train to sustain your pace, but you can’t train to bowl fast. You can increase maybe 3-4 kmph, but you can’t go from a slow bowler to an express bowler. I was just trying to do justice to my talent.”
"Is he really bowling that quick?"
Years later, after he featured in the Ranji Trophy, Aaron would understand how unique his skills were. At the start, it was just his love for the art that kept him steaming in to the popping crease and bustling around the ground. Over the last 18 months, the 35-year-old was involved in designing and setting up the MRF Pace Foundation's new high performance center. When youngsters ask him for advice, he keeps it simple.
“Early on, I was just enjoying my bowling," he tells Sportskeeda. "Kids come to me and ask me, ‘How do I bowl fast?’ I tell them, ‘Dude, first enjoy fast bowling.’ I used to enjoy the sight of a stump cartwheeling, or even something as simple as the keeper collecting the ball high. That used to give me a high. Making my team win the game was #1. Making my team win the game through bowling fast was #2. It was very basic, simple. Fast bowling happened along the way.”
At the start of the 21st century, a 150+ bowler in India was virtually unheard of. When broadcasters and producers saw Aaron cranking up the speed gun, they could scarcely believe their eyes, which weren’t trained to register not only the tall numbers being thrown up on the tech but also the electricity with which the ball thudded into the keeper’s gloves.
“I knew I was quick,” Aaron recollects. “In my second year of List A cricket for Jharkhand, we qualified for the knockouts. We beat a full-strength Mumbai in the quarterfinal, which was massive for a state like Jharkhand. Then we were playing in Indore, a live game on Neo Sports. I bowled the first over. There was immediate rattle on the radio. The producers were asking the umpires, ‘Is he really bowling that quick? I think our speed guns are wrong; it’s showing 147-148.’"
"Back then, nobody had bowled that quick, especially in domestic cricket. My first spell went in the producers working out whether the speed guns were okay. They eventually settled on the idea that on that day, something was wrong. Then, in the next match, the finals, I bowled 150+. They recalibrated it and made sure everything was okay, and then they realized that nothing was wrong. And then I told myself, ‘Okay, damn, I am pretty quick!’”
In the 2010s, Aaron and Umesh Yadav were India’s only two bowlers capable of bowling in the high 140s. When the former hit his prime in 2014, he was statistically the fastest bowler in that calendar year in Tests, with his average speed crossing the 145-kph mark.
"I thought I would retire at 27" - Varun Aaron
Cricket is advancing rather slowly when it comes to technology and analytics. Biomechanics-based training and scouting is slowly catching on, but when Aaron was hitting his straps, there certainly wasn’t enough exposure. Injuries inevitably followed, and he didn’t have anyone to turn to to identify the causes and solutions.
“I was at peace with bowling fast, but I was never at peace with getting injured. The number of times I got injured; it was very irritating. I was always getting injured at crucial junctures as well. As a fast bowler, whenever your rhythm is good, that’s when you want to step things up. That’s when your form gets better and better, and eventually you become one of the world’s best bowlers. I wanted to be up there with the best, and on my day, I could do things to be up there. But I needed to consistently play, and injuries completely set me back. To find your rhythm and get things together takes a few games.”
“When I played for India, I got a stress fracture after my debut series. I rushed back to play in the IPL in 2012. I shouldn’t have; I was pretty young and naive back then, so I thought I could do it. I fractured it again, and I got two years off after that. During my rehab, I fractured it again, and then after that I had a screw put in."
"I was at my prime back then. And then I had to make changes to my action - I did it myself because I wasn’t able to find answers anywhere. There’s a lot of research and in-depth analysis I’ve done into fast bowling just to be on the field throughout my career. And I’m really surprised that I played till I was 35. I thought I would retire when I was 27,” Aaron admits.
“I waited 20 years for my first World Cup; you can wait 20 overs for your first wicket” - Sachin Tendulkar on Varun Aaron’s Test debut
Making his Test debut at the Wankhede Stadium, Varun Aaron was in for a rude shock. The curators had rolled out a completely flat deck, and the West Indies plugged away to 474 for the loss of just three wickets in 150 tiresome overs. Aaron, who took the new ball, was without a wicket in 22 overs.
Highlights of the match reveal Aaron walking back to his mark, muttering something under his breath with a disgruntled look on his face, ahead of his seventh spell of the innings. He appeared to be finding the motivation to steam in and make something happen for his team.
With a bit of inspiration from the legendary Sachin Tendulkar, Aaron delivered a penetrative spell that produced three wickets and brought India back into the game. It was an early indication of the cloth from which he was cut.
“I was finding it really odd,” Aaron remembers. “Throughout my career until then, I had never gone 20 overs without getting a wicket. Guys were getting beaten; edges were not carrying. I was telling myself, ‘Dude, what the hell? How can you not get a wicket?’ Sachin paaji came up to me and asked me why I seemed a bit off. I said, ‘Paaji, this has never happened to me.’ He replied, ‘I waited 20 years for my first World Cup; you can wait 20 overs for your first wicket.’ He had a point! [laughs] That brought me back to reality. I gave it a proper go and got three wickets after that.”
Hailing from Jharkhand, Aaron’s path was of course going to be intertwined with that of MS Dhoni. The iconic former skipper was the captain when the fast bowler made his Test debut, and Aaron even had the rare honor of leading Dhoni in a Vijay Hazare Trophy game back in the 2015-16 season.
“MS is one of those captains who gives every player his space. He appears in very small pockets to suggest things. At the Indian team level, everyone knows their game, more or less. He’s a great, instinctive thinker of the game. He can give you great inputs at very important junctures, but he doesn’t get into players’ spaces and try to coach them.”
Injuries hampered Aaron’s IPL career, and he never really established himself as a mainstay in any franchise for a sustained run. He had his moments with Delhi, and his best season on paper came in 2014, when he picked up 16 wickets for the Royal Challengers Bengaluru. He puts this down to being on the field enough to nail down the necessary rhythm.
“My first couple of years with Delhi Daredevils were really good,” Aaron says. “I was young then, and they were trying to use me on certain wickets to give me experience. The season before I got picked for the Indian team for the first time was great. When I played for RCB in 2014, that’s when my game came together. I had done a lot of work to come back from injuries, and it was totally because I had put in a lot more time. 2014 was one of the only seasons where I didn’t deal with any injuries. Starting from 2013 in the Ranji Trophy, I had a sustained year of just cricket. My rhythm was on. In 2017-18, I had another injury-free season with Rajasthan Royals. We did really well in the Vijay Hazare Trophy and I played County cricket as well.”
The Varun Aaron highlight reel
Aaron’s career was littered with memorable moments. His bouncer-yorker setup to Moeen Ali at Old Trafford was a moment of magic in an otherwise dismal 2014 tour. Stuart Broad was never the same batter after having his nose broken by an Aaron bouncer and has admitted to having nightmares of the incident.
Aaron’s last-wicket partnership with Umesh Yadav in an ODI against the West Indies is still fresh in memory. That wasn’t the only time he had to wield the willow and scamper around in an India shirt. On his Test debut, he charged desperately back to the non-striker’s end as Ravichandran Ashwin’s comparatively underwhelming effort in the other direction resulted in the match ending in a thrilling draw.
In the IPL, at a time when the pacer was past his physical prime, he delivered a sensational inswinging knuckle-ball to completely bamboozle Shubman Gill. Even in the 2022 season, Aaron was clocking above 140 kph while bowling for the Gujarat Titans.
“I’m not at all content. There’s no cricketer who retires fully content. Even Sachin would’ve thought he could’ve scored a couple more hundreds! Definitely not content with what I did, but I am at peace with it to a certain extent. Considering my circumstances, I was able to deliver the goods more often than not. Throughout my career, I was always playing through an injury or coming back from injury. All this is part of my story. It’s taught me a lot about cricket, and a lot about life. Injuries teach you how fragile life can be,” Aaron says.
What does the future hold for Varun Aaron?
Aaron may have the odd regret or two, but his eyes are trained on the future. Having been through his share of highs and lows, he can do his bit to ensure that the path is well-paven for the current fast bowlers.
“The more cricket you play, the more you’ll get injured. There’s hardly anything that can stop that. Your body is not designed to bowl fast. Throughout my career, I was in the top three in any fitness marker - 2ks, yo-yos, strength tests, etc. But that didn’t guarantee me not being injured. It was more about movement mechanics. There’s no golden bullet for fast bowlers staying fit,” he says.
“One important thing is how they grow up in their initial years," Aaron continues. "A lot of coaches, in the 14-17 year old period, try to make changes to bowlers. Sometimes that’s not needed. You just listen to the coach, thinking they know everything. But letting the bowler grow in the action is important."
"The clear case is Bumrah," he explains. "Even with an extremely unorthodox action, he has had extended periods where he has been fit because his body has adapted to it. Bumrah had no reference point, his body has inherently told itself, ‘Boss, you have a lot of hypermobility. Why don’t you use it in this way?’ There’s a lot of injury management happening at the highest level, but not a lot of people are going back to that young age where you can actually set a fast bowler up to not be injured in his career.”
India now have quite a few bowlers who can breach the 150kph mark. Mayank Yadav, Umran Malik, Kuldeep Sen and Mohsin Khan are among those who have done that in recent IPL seasons, but all of them find themselves on the sidelines far more often than they’d like.
Aaron, who has lived this nightmare over and over again, has plenty of wisdom to offer. He believes that ascertaining the biomechanical cause of the problem is paramount and whips a personal example out of the vault to drive his point home.
“If you’re constantly getting injured, especially in the case of Mayank and Umran and these guys, they need to address a few biomechanical factors. They’re not getting injured because of lack of strength or lack of fitness. I had to change my action to stay fit. I might not have played the game at all if I had continued with my old action,” he speculates.
“When I was 14, my back foot used to land and point towards fine leg," Aaron elaborates. "It was a semi-open action. After a bit of tinkering, my action became past front-on. My back foot started pointing towards first slip, which was a very unnatural position without stability. I had to make a lot of compensations within my action to bowl fast. If I had stayed with my 14-year-old action, life would’ve been perfect, and we’d be having a very different conversation right now! [chuckles]. In 2013, I took my back foot back to fine leg, and it was very difficult. Changing your lower body is tougher than your upper body. That gave me more balance, and I was going towards the target.”
A well-spoken individual, Aaron has forayed into broadcasting to go with his fast-bowling mentorship role. His parents instilling activity and hard work in him continues to pay off to this day, with the veteran now keen on donning different hats and pushing himself, albeit in ways that are less taxing on his body.
“I love broadcasting. I had a lot of fun covering tournaments like the IPL and the World Cup. I really enjoy it. I’d love to help the next generation of fast bowlers bowl fast. The holy grail for a fast bowler is to bowl fast and have skill, without compromising on either. You don’t have too many people in India who have been through these things and challenges. I would love to help the young kids believe in themselves even if they get injured. The biggest thing I’ve discovered is that the human body doesn’t have any limits - you just need to be disciplined and push yourself hard enough.”
Aaron will be remembered as a cricketer who did just that - push himself hard enough to break barriers. And what’s a few broken bones along the way?
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