Abstract. The sunspot number - a proxy of solar activity - varies roughly periodically with time. However the individual cycle durations and amplitudes are found to vary in an irregular way. An important feature of the solar cycle is the Maunder minimum during 1645-1715 when there were very few sunspots. We explore whether this irregular solar cycle can be modeled with the help of a flux transport dynamo model of the solar cycle. We model the periods of the last 23 sunspot cycles by varying the meridional circulation speed. We find that most of the cycle amplitudes also get modeled up to some extent when we model the periods. Moreover, under certain situations we are able to reproduce Maunder like grand minimum. However, we fail to reproduce these results if the value of turbulent diffusivity is reasonably low.