August 8, 2026
The Evolution of Sunil Narine
In the face of every challenge, Sunil Narine has morphed throughout his career. He remodelled his actions, developed new variations, and even became an opening batter. And he's nowhere near the end. After already accomplishing more than most can dream of, how will Sunil Narine evolve next?
Introduction
In 2015, the cricket world thought Sunil Narine’s career might be over. The ICC had ruled that every variation in his bowling arsenal - the deliveries that made him nearly impossible to face - were illegal. He had to rebuild his action from scratch, under public scrutiny, with no guarantee he’d ever bowl the same way again.
But he returned, and never looked back once. Today, Sunil Narine is one of the most decorated T20 players of all time, with one of the most successful careers across franchise leagues and international circuits. He won the T20 World Cup with the West Indies in 2012, and claimed 10 more franchise league wins: 3 IPL Titles, 4 wins in the CPL, 2 wins in the Bangladesh Premier League, and a recent win at MLC 2026.
Sunil Narine’s story isn’t one of a great bowler. It's a story about constantly reinventing himself, to consistently stay at the top of his game.
The Come Up
Sunil Narine was famously named after the Little Master, Sunil Gavaskar. His father was a huge fan of the Indian batter, and hoped his son would follow in the legend’s footsteps. Of course, Narine never turned out to be a prolific test batter, only one of the greatest T20 players the world has ever seen.
His first-class debut in February 2009, for Trinidad and Tobago, wasn’t exactly spectacular. He went wicketless in 13 overs. In fact, Narine didn’t catch headlines until later that year.
In a West Indies 4-day trial game, Narine picked up all 10 wickets in an innings. That got him a squad call-up, and from there, the breakthrough came fast. In The Caribbean T20 in 2010/2011, Narine picked 5 wickets at an average of just 13.40.
He went on to represent Trinidad and Tobago in the Champions League T20 later that year, where he ended as the leading wicket taker with 11 wickets. He remains the leading wicket taker of the defunct Champions League T20, at 39 scalps.
At the biggest stage in Franchise cricket, Sunil Narine delivered, and the world saw what he was capable of.
Narine 1.0
2012 was a massive year for Sunil Narine. In February the Kolkata Knight Riders picked up Narine for $700,000. He had a base price of just $50,000, and had only 3 international games to his name at the time, but the cricketing world had seen enough to know Narine was immensely valuable.
Here’s what made him such a nightmare to face. On paper, Narine bowled off-spin. Except he rarely ever did; he had practically mastered deceiving batters with a range of variations: the carrom ball, the knuckleball, and the doosra, all delivered with no visible change in grip or action.
The carrom ball specifically was Narine’s biggest asset. Depending on where his fingers sat, it could spin leg-to-off, off-to-leg, or come out almost dead straight. Batters struggled to read it out of the hand, and had to play his overs out for their survival.
In his debut IPL season, he picked an astounding 24 wickets averaging just 13.5, the third most wickets in a single IPL season at the time. In that same season, he took the Kolkata Knight Riders to their maiden IPL title, winning Player of the Tournament.
That same year, he joined the West Indies in winning the 2012 T20 World Cup, where in the final, the Windies successfully defended just 137 runs. He ended that game with 3 wickets for just 9 runs, bundling Sri Lanka out for just 101. He cemented his name as a big match player, and secured two of the world’s biggest T20 trophies, all in one year.
Narine continued his domination from 2012-2014. He was the league’s leading wicket taker in those 3 years, while having the best bowling average among bowlers with at least 50 overs bowled.
Those three seasons consecutively, he picked MORE than 20 wickets, at an average under 20, and an economy under a run-a-ball on two of those three occasions. He had by far the best economy rate and best bowling average in those three years, even making a full-form Lasith Malinga look expensive. Narine was the only bowler to maintain an economy under 6 an over, from IPL 2012-2014.
His value cannot be overstated; he was pivotal in KKR winning 2 titles within 3 IPL seasons, in 2012 and 2014.
Narine continued to dominate in the Champions League T20. He remains the all-time leading wicket taker in the defunct tournament, with 39 scalps. Among bowlers with at least 15 wickets in the tournament’s history, he was the only one with a bowling average under 15, and one of two bowlers with an economy rate under a run-a-ball.
Sunil Narine 1.0 was absolutely untouchable. He was in a league of his own.
Banned
Fast forward to November 2015. Sunil Narine had already won two IPL titles, a Player of the Tournament, and an ICC T20 World Cup. He had also already received warnings from the ICC over his suspect bowling action, late in the previous year, forcing him to pull out of the 2015 Cricket World Cup. Now, he had been officially suspended, with the ICC declaring that his variations exceeded the 15 degree arm-bend limit in his action.
That was devastating for a bowler like Narine. Everything that made his mystery and aura as a bowler was stripped away from him. He had to remodel his action, once again, rebuilding the very aspect of his game that brought him success. He even went on to miss the 2016 T20 World Cup, where the West Indies went on to become the first ever team to win two T20 World Cup titles.
Getting an ICC suspension was no small ordeal, particularly in the early 2010s when the council sought to crack down on off-spinners with ambiguous actions. The suspensions ruined careers. Saeed Ajmal and Pragyan Ojha were both prominent spinners for Pakistan and India, making waves around white-ball circuits globally. Both of them never recovered from the ICC’s calls, and saw their careers vanish.
Narine 2.0
Narine didn’t stop. In 2016, he worked closely with bowling coach Carl Crowe to remodel his action completely. It was cleared by the ICC that April, and he was free to bowl in all formats again. The biggest change he made to his bowling was in his runup, where he now hid the ball behind his leg, attempting to hide his grip from batters.
But as is the nature of cricket, batters had figured Narine out by now. Amidst remodelling his action and gaining exposure to T20 cricket around the world, Narine wasn’t quite the same bowler as he was in his purple patch. Batters learned to read him, and could play out his overs with ease. Still, after 15 seasons in the IPL, he hasn’t finished a season with an economy rate above 8.0 an over. However, with his mystery diminishing, he had to reinvent himself somehow to continue dominating as he once did.
Sunil Narine did just that. In the 2016-2017 Big Bash League, Aaron Finch sent Sunil Narine up the order to open the batting for the Melbourne Renegades against the Stars. He smashed 21 off just 13 deliveries - a short-lived innings, but one that set the Renegades off to a solid start in the Powerplay. But opening the batting wasn’t an immediate success for him. He managed only 16 runs in his next two innings at the top of the order, and was sent back down the lineup.
This little stint at the top, though, was enough to catch the eye of Gautam Gambhir. In IPL 2017, the Kolkata Knight Riders shocked the tournament by sending Narine up as their opener to replace the injured Chris Lynn. He won Player of the Match in his first ever IPL innings as an opener, scoring 37 off just 18 against the Kings XI Punjab. He scored another quickfire 42 off 17 against the Gujarat Lions just 2 games later. He was also KKR’s top scorer, with 34 off 17, in their incredible win over RCB, where they bundled out the opposition for just 49, the lowest ever innings total in IPL history.
Narine had revamped his T20 game completely in 2017. He wasn’t just a mystery with the ball anymore, but an X-factor all-rounder who could change a game with the bat at the top of the order. His fearless, boundary-targeting approach at the top of the order was, in a way, more extreme than any opener at the time, because opponents didn’t expect it at all. He was ready to slog every ball, and when he connected, he would put KKR far ahead in any game.
Batting wasn’t all he changed in this time, though. Since he was called and suspended for his stock delivery, the off-spinner, he had to develop a new variation. This is when he turned to the knuckleball.
He used his index and middle fingers to flick over the top of the ball like a seamer, revolutionizing spin bowling in white-ball cricket as he became one of the first high-profile names to adopt this variation.
Sunil Narine now had four key deliveries to turn to: his adjusted off-spinner with a new action, which he gripped with split fingers, unlike a traditional off-spinner (already deceiving batsmen), the Doosra, the Carrom Ball, and the newly adopted Knuckleball, which would spin away from right-handers or go straight through, depending on where on the seam it landed.
And Sunil Narine continued to dominate. He won back-to-back CPL titles with the Trinbago Knight Riders in 2017 and 2018, picking 20 wickets in two seasons at the fourth lowest economy among all bowlers with at least 30 overs.
Even with more reports for his suspect action, at the PSL in 2018, and again during IPL 2020, he was cleared and remained one of the best white-ball bowlers on the planet.
Fast forward to IPL 2024, and Sunil Narine had yet another renaissance, as an opening batsman once again. Shreyas Iyer’s Knight Riders wanted Narine at the top with Phil Salt, and he more than delivered. He racked up 488 runs from 15 innings, his best season with the bat by a mile. He even managed his first IPL century, with 109 off just 56 balls, against the Rajasthan Royals. You would take a 450+ run season from your full-time IPL opener any day of the week, and to have that kind of a season from Sunil Narine, who isn’t a full-time batter, was instrumental in securing KKR another IPL title. After over 500 T20s played, he scored his maiden IPL hundred in his thirteenth season at the league, a testament to his longevity and willingness to grow as a player.
Narine finished the season with another MVP campaign, named Player of the Tournament with 17 wickets at just over a run-a-ball apart from his blistering form with the bat.
That same year, Narine also became the fourth player ever — and the first spinner — to reach 500 T20 matches, and he won his third IPL MVP award: 2024, following 2012 and 2018. Three MVPs is the most by any player in IPL history.
He didn’t stop being a bowler to become a batter. He became both, at the same time, more than a decade into his career.
He backed this up with his fourth CPL title in 2025 with the Trinbago Knight Riders, becoming the leading wicket taker in CPL history, with 133 victims. He then waltzed into IPL 2026 and became just the third bowler to reach 200 IPL wickets.
Narine 3.0+
The world was asking what more Sunil Narine had to give to the game, after completing practically everything in franchise cricket.
And he evolved yet again. In MLC 2026, he transformed his bowling, becoming a regular strike bowler in the powerplay. He finished the Group Stage of MLC 2026 as the leading wicket taker in the powerplay, and kept the opposition quiet during the first 6 overs.
He had the greatest powerplay dot ball percentage by far, and the joint-lowest boundary percentage, among bowlers with at least 5 overs in the powerplay. He also finished the season with an unimaginable economy rate under 5 runs an over, ridiculous for a spin-bowler in T20s in the modern era.
As everyone saw coming, he walked away with yet another franchise league title, and yet another Player of the Tournament award at MLC 2026, with 18 wickets at just 4.74.
Sunil Narine’s accolades in T20 cricket are undeniable. He’s won practically everything he’s touched. But beyond trophies, his continuous evolution into a multi-dimensional cricketer sets him a class apart from most cricketers of his generation. Narine has most definitely cemented his name as a hall-of-famer in T20 cricket, and with years to go in his franchise career, his legacy will only grow more dominant. How will Sunil Narine evolve next?