Comeback man Karun Nair reveals emotional struggles after being sidelined in 2022 without any competitive cricket for 14 months
India A’s Karun Nair during his 204 vs England Lions at Canterbury last month. Pic/Getty Images
His Bradmanesque sequence of scores in domestic cricket in recent years have mingled with the most testing time of his career, but Karun Nair picks the “end of 2022” as the toughest he has had to endure, describing it as “quite a dark place.”
The 33-year-old Nair’s journey back to the Indian Test team after eight years is a testament to his resilience and determination. “In terms of incidents, I would say, it was quite a dark place at the end of 2022. Very emotional phase for me. I think the toughest time for me. Even tougher than 2018, or whatever, whenever that was,” Nair said during an interaction with R Ashwin on his YouTube channel.
After the 2022 season, Nair went nearly 14 months without playing any competitive cricket. He then played for Northamptonshire.
On Friday, there is a strong possibility that he will be part of India’s playing XI for the first Test against England, beginning in Leeds.
Though he has emerged stronger, he wouldn’t want to go back to the time when he often wondered why he was dropped from the team a few games after scoring a memorable triple hundred in debut Test series against England, in 2016. “Very grateful to be in the situation that I am in and I just treat every day as something that’s given to me, and I am living my life and doing what I love,” he said.
Being dropped from the Indian team, without any explanation, was perplexing for Nair during that dark phase. “Honestly, I couldn’t understand what was
happening because after the 300 [303 not out] in Chennai, after the Australia series, the next series was in Sri Lanka in 2017. I wasn’t part of
that squad. From then on, I couldn’t understand what was happening.”
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