File photo of Karun Nair.© X (formerly Twitter)
Out-of-favour Indian batsman Karun Nair is currently wreaking havoc in domestic cricket. The right-handed batsman took advantage of his stellar form to hit his fourth consecutive hundred, the fifth in total in this edition of the Vijay Hazare Trophy, as Vidarbha defeated Rajasthan by nine wickets to advance to the semi-finals of the premier domestic 50-over tournament. . Karun continued his red-hot form in this version of the Vijay Hazare Trophy, notching his fifth hundred overall – a scintillating unbeaten 82-ball 122 with the help of 13 fours and five sixes. This was also his fourth consecutive 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 batsman Alviro Petersen as batters with four consecutive List A hundreds. The 33-year-old Karun has 664 runs from eight matches and an astonishing average of 664.
The star batsman made his India debut in 2016 and in only his third Test match, he scored an unbeaten 303, becoming the second Indian player after Virender Sehwag to score a triple hundred in the format.
After this, Karun only got three Test matches to play for India before being dropped from the squad. He hasn't been able to make a comeback since then.
During an interview with The Lallantop, former Indian cricketer Robin Uthappa spoke about how several players are overlooked despite having good form in domestic cricket. He started with the example of Abhimanyu Easwaran before mentioning the name of Karun and his achievements. Uthappa also slammed the Indian cricket ecosystem.
“If you don't let him play, why give him hope. Just tell him you don't believe he can succeed in international cricket, just play and score runs in domestic cricket. If you give him a chance, and this has happened to so many players, Karun Nair, he was removed from the team after his 300 and just two test matches.
“It is a shock from our cricket ecosystem.”
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