Karun Nair was recalled to the Test side after a gap of eight years, and he justified the move by scoring 150-plus runs against England Lions in the first unofficial Test of the two-match series. Playing at the no.3 slot, the right-handed batter was batting on 153 runs off 208 balls at the time of writing. He has hit 21 fours and 1 six. He added 179 runs with Sarfaraz Khan, who posted 92 runs off 119 deliveries, including 13 fours.
Nair scored a triple hundred against England in one of the Test matches, but the selectors didn’t give him a long run, and after a few failures, he was dropped from the team. Despite showing impressive form in domestic tournaments, the selection panel continued to ignore him before he moved to Vidarbha after being left out by Karnataka.
It proved to be a career-changing decision as he ruled the batting charts in the Ranji Trophy and Vijay Hazare Trophy. His 700-plus runs in the ODI competition were behind Vidarbha’s runners-up finish. The pain of losing the Vijay Hazare Trophy final to Karnataka was compensated by the team’s success in the Ranji Trophy. He managed more than 800 runs as Vidarbha defeated Kerala in the final.
In 6 Tests, he has recorded 374 runs at an average of 62.33. Karun has 8211 runs in 114 first-class matches at an average of 49.16, with the help of 23 hundreds and 36 fifties.
With Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli’s retirement from Test cricket, players like Karun will have to contribute in the batting department in the five Test matches against England.
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