Karun Nair of Northamptonshire celebrates reaching his century in the County Championship

Over seven years since he last represented India, Karun Nair still harbours dreams of playing Test cricket. He spoke to Aadya Sharma about that Chennai innings, his eye-opening stint with Northamptonshire, reinventing his T20 game, and manifesting a Test comeback. 

Karun Nair knows a thing or two about comebacks. And we’re not talking in cricketing terms. In 2016, barely weeks after he earned an India debut in Zimbabwe, Karun was in Kerala for a temple festival, when a snake boat carrying him capsized into the Pampa river. Karun did not know how to swim, but was plucked out by locals, even as several others succumbed to the dreadful currents.

“Lucky to be alive,” he later said.

Five months later, Karun stood in Chennai, raising his bat to acknowledge the biggest moment of his career.

“It's just great memories,” Karun tells Wisden in an interview. “I would say, just looking back at it, I can't even believe that I was able to do that at that kind of age”.

It’s a feat that will forever be a part of his story. Two Tests old at that point, Karun became the thirtieth triple-centurion, and only the second from India. Since then, only David Warner has added himself to the prestigious list.

After a feat this immense so early, you run the risk of playing catch-up all your life. Great careers are remembered for longevity, and if you can’t recreate your biggest hits, they’ll come back later to remind you where you were, and what could have been. 

Not for Karun, who doesn’t look at that time wistfully. India have played 68 Tests since Karun was dropped, getting just four innings after the Chennai mega-marathon. It's the smallest Test career that includes a triple ton. All he wants to do is get back there, and he knows he’s still good enough, if not better.

“I'm just really proud of myself, and all I can tell myself is, if I could do it then, I can do it now for sure, because I feel like I'm better now than I was back then,” Karun says.

“I would be better prepared in all kinds of situations now than I was back then. So it's just obviously great memories to have been part of what, yes, looking forward to making many more”.

Karun’s early Test bonanza matched his quick first-class success: in just his fourth innings, he’d cracked a ton opening the batting, and struck two more in the next two matches, both from No.5. Across those three innings, he came up against three Test spinners: Harbhajan Singh, Amit Mishra and Piyush Chawla.

The stamina to play long was quite evident: in 2015, he ended a string of underwhelming scores with an epic triple century in the Ranji Trophy final against Tamil Nadu, a year and a half before he would repeat the feat in a Test against England.

The Test triple in Chennai turned him into an overnight star, but in 11 first-class innings thereafter, he did not cross 30, including four failures against Australia. He was dropped – too soon for some – from the Test team, admitting he “wasn’t in the right frame of mind”. The following Ranji season, he averaged 68 with three centuries.

But it was never the same.

As seasons passed, Karun’s India dream drifted further away, to the point that in 2022/23, he was dropped from the Karnataka state team from all formats.

“Dear cricket, give me one more chance,” he tweeted.

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Today, Karun is in a much better space: at Vidarbha, his new state team, he top-scored with 690 runs at 40.58 in their run to the 2023/24 Ranji final.

“Obviously, it was a difficult decision, not something that I ever wanted to do,” Karun says about his switch from Karnataka, a team he’s played all his career. “But worse, it was something that I had to do, I had no other choice.”

Before Vidarbha, though, his red-ball renovation came across two seasons at Northamptonshire. It reconfigured his instincts as a batter, and more importantly, it healed his confidence.

“I personally think it's really important for any Indian domestic batsman, whoever has the opportunity, to go play the County circuit,” Karun says, “because it develops a game in ways that you cannot even probably imagine before you get there, because you can only learn when to get there.

“You cannot prepare yourself for it when you're here or anywhere else.

When Karun arrived, Northamptonshire were in Division One, and yet to play ”the three strongest teams” of the competition. On debut, Karun stroked to 78 in Edgbaston against Warwickshire, and followed it with a 150 against a Surrey attack led by three international quicks.

This year, “it was completely different”, when he arrived at the start of the summer, with Northamptonshire down to Division Two.

“At the start, the first one month was probably the coldest conditions that I've ever played cricket in,” Karun admits. “It was something I had to really get adjusted to, or probably as an Indian batsman, you are never prepared to face those kinds of situations or conditions.

“The first one month was really tough, because you were having so many layers on yourself, and you still couldn't feel the bat in your hand when the bowler was running. You're literally shivering in your legs, because that's exactly how you're feeling, not because you're probably terrified of the bowler or anything”.

Karun went on to have another solid season. In 11 innings, he struck 487 runs at 48.70, including a double-ton: his first in first-class cricket since that knock against England.

“It's really a great experience for any batsman to face those kinds of conditions, to face a moving ball, you just feel like, as a batsman, you're never set because you can get a ball from nowhere suddenly, when you when you kind of think that all’s very easy.

“And it'll even be better if they manage to do well. It's always a confidence boost when you can get runs.

“It can sometimes hamper your confidence if you don't get runs, but again, you're still learning. Even if you're not getting runs, you're still learning to play differently or play in different ways and find different areas to score.”

Is there anything he’d do differently the next time he’s on a county stint?

“I might take a few thermals with me that I can wear under the clothing they give you anyway!”

In a leap to the other end of the spectrum, Karun travelled from Campbell’s County Ground to Bengaluru’s Chinnaswamy Stadium last month to play in the Maharaja T20 Trophy, one of several unofficial feeder systems to the IPL. This season, he led Mysuru Warriors to the title, ending the season as the top run-getter: a century and five half-centuries included.

The strike-rate, of 181.22, is several units higher than his career T20 strike rate of 132.41.

Karun swears by the same array of strokes he’s always had, not looking to expand his arsenal.

 

 

“It's just about being confident in being able to play those shots more frequently”, he says. Last year, in the same competition, he smashed a 40-ball century. This year, he got one in 42.

The same aerial leg-side flicks and inside-out drives once made Karun a regular in the IPL. From 2014 until 2018, he played almost a full season each time, but has added no IPL caps since 2020.

“The IPL is a different beast altogether,” he admits.

“Sometimes it's difficult [to get back] once you go off the radar, it's difficult for you to get back into that XI,” he says. “At the moment, it's just about finding a way to get back into that level, and then I'm sure that, you know, with the skills that I possess, that I can do well for whichever team I play for, and contribute to the team winning”.

Having clocked over a hundred first-class and over 150 T20 games, Karun is the statesman-leader the rookies look up to, be it in Vidarbha or at the Warriors. To his credit, he is still beating his younger mates in the numbers game.

Yet, with the IPL auction not too far away, those “numbers don’t matter” to Karun, who’s focussed on “grinding this way” back. The Test dream is what he still plays and lives for.

As another Test series arrives, and another anniversary of the Chennai Test approaches, even at 32, he remains confident of a comeback. A total of twelve batters have been tried at No.5 since he last played a Test for India.

“There's only one goal: to play Test cricket for India, again, which I'm fully confident that I am capable of,” Karun says.

“And once I get that opportunity, I'm sure I'll do well as well. It's just about manifesting that to happen.

“Waking up every single day, thinking about it in the morning, and then heading out in your day to work towards it, put in the hard yards towards it.”

If he does pull it off, it will be another incredible comeback story.

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