Karun Nair comeback story

Karnataka has always produced mentally tough cricketers. “It’s part of the blood here,” Karun Nair’s childhood coach says, the pride in his voice almost tangible. “It’s part of the culture.” Vijay Madyalkar called it Karnataka’s own brand of khadoos – less abrasive than Mumbai’s, but no less unyielding. Few embody it quite like Karun Nair. In December 2016, Nair announced himself with a thunderclap: a 303 not out against England in Chennai, making him only the second Indian after Virender Sehwag to hit a triple century in Tests. He was just three matches into his Test career. At 25, the future looked gilded. But it never quite arrived. Three more Tests came, against Australia in 2017. And then, silence. He was picked for the 2018 tour of England, sat on the bench for four Tests, and when a vacancy opened for the final match, India flew in Hanuma Vihari—who wasn’t even in the squad originally. Nair, who was, didn’t get a game. 3006 days later, Karun Nair walked out to bat for India in a Test match. It was at Headingley, Leeds, a long, winding road from Chennai, where he had last worn the whites for India. Dismissed for a duck, it wasn’t the fairytale return many would dream of, but the fact that he was there again, on the teamsheet, in whites, was hopefully the start of a second innings. No one better than Nair knows there’s a second innings—in a Test, and in life. “Waiting is nothing new for Karun, is it?” Vijay says, before answering himself. “Absolutely. You won’t believe it—he should’ve debuted a year earlier. But because senior players were in the team, he had to wait. I remember one season we travelled with the Karnataka Under-25 side to Vizag, and he scored 500 runs in five matches. What he’s doing now, he’s done before. I reminded him about that and he said, ‘Yes, sir. I was thinking the same thing.’ It’s amazing.” But that kind of patience can bruise a career. And it did. Karun drifted out of the Indian side without explanation, without farewell. Then, in 2022, the silence became louder. He was dropped from Karnataka’s Ranji side, a team he had once captained. Opportunities dried up. The Indian Premier League (IPL) door closed. A SIMPLE PLAN: KEEP BATTING One day, he showed up at Vijay’s cricket academy on the outskirts of Bengaluru, two hours away in choked traffic. He had no matches to play, no team to represent. Just a stubborn flicker of belief. “This was in 2022,” his coach recalls. “He wasn’t part of the state team. He was very upset and had no cricket to play. One day, he came to the academy. “He just said, ‘Sir, I don’t know why, but I want to do something.’” Vijay Madyalkar didn’t offer platitudes. Just a plan. “I told him, ‘You’re a batsman. Let’s just focus on batting. You don’t have to worry about anything. Your mindset is brilliant. Your fitness is excellent. You’ve already scored a triple hundred in a Test—what can I teach you?’ So we decided to refine his skills and keep hitting balls. What followed was five months of quiet obsession. “We kept it simple—basic cricket. Cover drives, cut shots, same skills repeated. You won’t believe it—he used to play 600 balls every alternate day. We literally counted them. He never took a single ball lightly. Even if he missed one, he’d feel bad. His focus was extraordinary. There was zero negativity, zero excuses.” ONE MORE CHANCE The same year, Karun posted a tweet that would gain momentum later: “Dear cricket, give me one more chance.” At the time, it barely made a ripple. But in 2024, when he began dominating the domestic circuit again, the tweet went viral. Karun made no fuss. He simply embraced whatever came his way—matches in the Karnataka Premier League, domestic games under grey English skies, grinding spells for Vidarbha on dry, cracked dust bowls back home. After being sidelined by Karnataka, he shifted base to Vidarbha with quiet determination. In 2023 and 2024, he took his game to England—first with a local club, then with Northamptonshire in the County Championship. There too, he dug deep: 249 runs in three matches in 2023, followed by 487 in seven the next year, including a stoic double hundred. By the 2024–25 season, Karun was relentless. He topped the Vijay Hazare Trophy charts with 779 runs at an astonishing average of 389.50. He was Vidarbha’s leading scorer in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. And in the Ranji Trophy, he finished as the fourth-highest run-getter in the country, his four centuries instrumental in Vidarbha’s title-winning campaign. And through it all, he kept expanding his range, his hunger, his belief. Karun Nair had a stellar domestic season (PTI Photo) “He was focused purely on skill enhancement. He even developed a new stroke—a reverse-sweep six—which he executed beautifully during the KPL (Karnataka Premier League). We never spoke about the future or his past setbacks. He never showed frustration or disappointment. His only goal was to prepare.” That was the mantra through his years in exile: no talk of the future, no dwelling on the past. Just the next ball, and the one after that. When India finally came calling again, the coach barely needed to say a word. “Not much,” he says of their conversation. “He’s a quiet guy. We understand each other without having to say much. I followed his Ranji Trophy games and messaged him a few times, but that’s all.” Still, the satisfaction was immense. “For any coach, this is the moment we wait for—this is our reward. Everything else in life comes and goes, but these are the moments we want to experience. It’s a very satisfying feeling.” “If I could give Karun one message for the rest of his career,” the coach says, “it would be: keep scoring runs and make sure that whenever you play for India, you help the team win. That’s…