Varun Aaron's Journey from Fast Bowler to Coach

Varun Aaron was done chasing pace. Or so he thought.

The former India quick had slipped into retirement earlier in 2025 at 35, swapped sweat for studio lights, and found a comfortable rhythm in broadcasting. Coaching? That was never on a whiteboard or a five-year plan. Then Daniel Vettori picked up the phone.

One call from the Sunrisers Hyderabad head coach, and Aaron’s second career truly began.

A coach hiding in plain sight

The truth is, Aaron had been coaching long before anyone gave him a title.

In Jharkhand dressing rooms, teammates would drift across to his corner, asking about wrist positions, run-ups, follow-throughs. Years of injuries had forced him into an obsessive study of his own body and action. He had effectively been both bowler and backroom staff.

"I think I've coached myself quite a bit because of the amount of injuries I've had," he says. The line lands with the weight of someone who’s spent too much time in MRI machines and rehab gyms.

That curiosity grew into something more formal. The new MRF Pace Foundation High Performance Center was his project from the ground up – concept, design, protocols, programme, even the redevelopment of the ground and gym. It was his way of repaying the academy that shaped him. He then moved into a bowling consultant role with the Jharkhand State Cricket Association.

Yet even with all that, he hadn’t mapped out a future in the dugout.

"After retiring, I really was not setting out any targets. I was not thinking, 'I want to coach, I want to commentate.' After having a journey which was hampered by injuries throughout, all I wanted to do was enjoy myself after retiring, and whatever came about after that just happened on its own. And then one day, Dan rang me up and asked me if I was interested to coach Sunrisers."

No long courtship. No grand plan. Just a call, and a chance.

Building a pace cartel from scratch

The brief in his first season with Sunrisers was clear: assemble a bowling group, shape it, and get the kids ready.

Aaron wasn’t just handed a whistle and a net session. He was given a voice in the auction room. Among the names he circled were two young quicks – Praful Hinge and Sakib Hussain.

"What I saw was not what they were doing, but what they could do," Aaron says. It’s a coach’s sentence, all potential and projection. "I had a feeling that we could achieve what I could envision they could do, which they weren't doing. I'm glad it just worked out."

It worked out quickly.

Hinge and Sakib ripped into Rajasthan Royals on debut, each grabbing four-wicket hauls in their first IPL game. For the outside world, they arrived overnight. For Aaron, this was months in the making.

Those months weren’t straightforward. Aaron was also on commentary duty at the T20 World Cup, which meant he was juggling two jobs and two time zones in the same day. Some days he would bring Sakib to Mumbai, broadcast in the morning, then coach in the evening. Other days, the order flipped. As the World Cup schedule tightened and his travel spiked, he needed help.

He turned to someone he trusted completely – SS Rao at the Rao Cricket Academy, his former Jharkhand captain.

"Me and SS Rao have a brotherly relationship," Aaron says. "He was captain when I played for Jharkhand and I wanted them to go to somebody who I trust, and basically if I tell that person what has to be done, he does exactly that and nothing different. So I sent them there with a set of instructions that they have to do this, this, this, and he absolutely abided by it. Obviously, him being so experienced, his presence and his energy did so much good to them, also his coaching."

The results showed. But Hinge and Sakib were only part of the story.

"I think Shivang [Kumar] was unbelievable as well. And then you had Onkar [Tarmale] who hadn't played. He just got injured at the right time, so people didn't see him, but he's somebody who can move 145. We had some really good, interesting picks."

Those picks didn’t happen in a vacuum. They came from trust.

"When you're empowered by the head coach and the team owner in that fashion, I really feel your job becomes all that much easier," Aaron says. "I think I was really lucky to be a part of a brilliant team, because it's not very common that in your first year you get an almost free hand to do what you want to. Through that, I just felt I could express myself creatively in whatever I did and it was a lot of fun."

A fast bowler, once shackled by his own body, now given a free hand with others. The irony isn’t lost on him.

The gospel of simplicity

Aaron talks about fast bowling the way a good batting coach talks about timing – strip it down, remove the noise.

"Fast bowling is really simple, but I think as a player you complicate it a lot," he explains. "You try different things. But at the end of the day, it just boils down to a few very basic principles. If you can simplify it or if you have somebody who can simplify it, then it just makes your journey a whole lot more enjoyable and easy."

Simple doesn’t mean one-size-fits-all.

"There's no set method to coaching. It completely depends on the individual. I think every individual comes with certain skill sets. Number one, you've got to identify what's unique about the bowler. And amplify it. And if there are any shortcomings, you just have to make the bowler more efficient."

Some bowlers glide. Some creak. Some are born with textbook actions. Others carry injury histories and awkward biomechanics. Aaron has lived on the wrong side of that divide.

"Some bowlers just present with a beautiful action and they're able to execute whatever they want. And some bowlers just have injury history, have different actions which don't make it easy for them. So, that's when you have to do some work. Everybody's different. Every bowler presents differently. And I feel that's where coaching has to head, where you see every bowler as an individual because everybody has different musculature, everybody's got different minds, everybody's got different coordination, everybody's got different biomechanics."

That individual lens extends to performance itself.

"I genuinely think that you can't look at somebody's performance and be like, 'Oh, that was a bad performance' or 'that was a good performance'. As a coach, I really feel you've got to find the reason behind a bad performance or a good performance. If it's a good performance, you should make sure that the bowler remembers why he or she performed well. And if it's a bad performance, it's something to take away from. You can learn from it. But if you just meander along day after day, just bowl, go home, bowl, go home, then it doesn't really add up to anything."

For a generation raised on speed guns and social media clips, that message is not always easy to sell.

Speed, timing and the scars of 153kph

Aaron knows exactly how intoxicating a number on a big screen can be. His own name surged into headlines when he hit 153kph in the 2010/11 Vijay Hazare Trophy final. Back then, India didn’t produce many bowlers in that bracket. The tag of “fastest” followed him everywhere.

Young quicks still want to talk to him about pace first.

"Fast bowling is all about timing," he says. "When you're batting, you want to time your initial movement correctly so you're in a balanced position, your head is stable and you have time to access the ball. In bowling, your timing has to be spot-on before you release the ball. If you boil it down to one thing, if your timing and the sequencing of your action is right, I think you've won the battle. You will bowl as fast as you can, you won't be injured and you bowl the ball where you want to. And you can only bowl as fast as you can. You can't bowl faster than your body is going to allow."

Few are better placed to deliver that warning.

After his Ranji Trophy debut in 2008/09, he endured three stress fractures of the back. When he finally broke into the Test side in 2011, more back trouble followed. There was a gap of almost three years between his first Test and his second in 2014. His career became a tug-of-war between what the speed gun demanded and what his body could tolerate.

Now, as a coach, he’s on the other side of that conversation, trying to manage the same tension for others.

Two jobs, one obsession

The calendar doesn’t leave much breathing space. Coaching and commentary pull him in different directions, and not everyone at home is thrilled.

"How do I balance that? That's a question you have to ask my girlfriend because she's not the happiest customer - I'm hardly at home. But, yeah, I'm trying to give her and my family more time. It is quite hectic, but it is very enjoyable," he says.

The workload, though, brings its own advantages.

"It gives me a lot more insight. Obviously, you know a lot of players from before, but when you coach them, you know the inner depths of their mind. It helps you be a lot more predictive in your commentary because you know what the player does when he's under pressure. You know what the player's go-to ball is. You know what the player's field set is when he bowls a particular delivery. So, from that angle, coaching definitely helps broadcasters because you have a lot more recency and first-hand information about players. And like coaching helps broadcasting, sometimes broadcasting also helps coaching because I'm almost seeing all these players throughout different competitions."

He’s living in both worlds – the analyst’s gantry and the coach’s corner – and each is sharpening the other.

A new kind of joy

For someone who never set out to become a coach, Aaron sounds like a man who has stumbled onto the thing he was always meant to do.

"What it has taught me about myself is that coaching gives me immense happiness. There is no greater joy than talking to a bowler after a session and he has achieved every single thing he wanted to from that session."

The bowler who once chased 153kph now chases something quieter: the look in a young quick’s eyes when the ball finally comes out exactly as imagined.