File photo of Karun Nair.© X (formerly Twitter)
Out-of-favour India batter Karun Nair is currently wreaking havoc in domestic cricket. Exploiting his terrific run of form, the right-handed batter slammed his fourth successive hundred, fifth in total of this edition of the Vijay Hazare Trophy, as Vidarbha outclassed Rajasthan by nine wickets to move into the semifinals of the premier domestic 50-over tournament. Karun continued his red-hot form in this iteration of the Vijay Hazare Trophy, striking his fifth hundred overall – a whirlwind unbeaten 82-ball 122 with the help of 13 fours and five sixes. This was also his fourth successive ton in the last five innings.
Karun is now on par with former Karnataka teammate Devdutt Padikkal, former Sri Lankan skipper Kumar Sangakkara and ex-South African batter Alviro Petersen as batters with four successive List A hundreds. The 33-year-old Karun has 664 runs from eight matches at an astonishing average of 664.
The star batter made his India debut back in 2016 and only in his third Test match, he went on to score an unbeaten 303, becoming the second Indian player following Virender Sehwag to smash a triple hundred in the format.
After this, Karun was given just three Test matches to play for India before being dropped from the squad. He has not been able to make a comeback since then.
During an interview to The Lallantop, former India cricketer Robin Uthappa spoke about how several players are overlooked despite good form in domestic cricket. He started with the example of Abhimanyu Easwaran before citing the name of Karun and his achievements. Uthappa also slammed India’s cricket ecosystem.
“If you are not going to let him play, then why are you giving hope to him. Just tell him that you don’t believe that he can succeed in international cricket, just play and score runs in domestic cricket. If you are giving him a chance, and this has happened with so many players, Karun Nair, he was removed from the team after his 300 and only two Test matches.”
“It is a shocker because of our cricket ecosystem.”
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