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Karun Nair on the left and Sai Sudharsan on the right. (AP photo)
After piling on the runs in domestic cricket, Karun Nair made his comeback into the national side for the Anderson-Tendulkar trophy. With runs under his belt and experience of playing in county cricket, everything pointed towards a good series for Nair. However, it did not manifest. He ended up scoring 205 runs from four games at an average of 25.62. Former Indian cricketer Irfan Pathan, rating the cricketers based on their performance in the series, rates Nair four.
“Karun Nair gets four out of ten. Why? He didn’t look particularly poor throughout the series. He kept getting starts consistently but managed only one half-century. He got plenty of opportunities. Cricket definitely gave him a second chance, but he couldn’t capitalise on it the way he should have. Especially in the Lord’s Test, he had a real chance to win the match for India but couldn’t do it,” said Pathan, speaking on his YouTube channel.
“Other than that, it often seemed like he was playing well, building up nicely, and then suddenly, he’d play a loose shot and get out. At the Oval, when the bouncer was used against him, he looked a bit shaken and seemed more unsettled and uncomfortable. So, he gets four points,” Nair added.
It was always between Nair and Sai Sudharsan after the first Test till the final game at the Oval. Only one of them could have been fitted into the team because of the combination the team has decided to play with both yet again after Leed’s.
Rating Sudharsan’s series Pathan gave gave him five. “Sai Sudharsan gets five out of ten. He came across as a player who, with a bit of work on a few aspects, clearly has a lot of cricketing potential. He could have made better use of the opportunities he got but wasn’t quite able to do so. However, I do believe that if he had played all the matches, things might have turned out differently, but it’s not that easy.”
“When you go overseas, you get a chance, your team loses, then you get dropped, and later you’re brought back. Even selecting a playing XI is a tough job. But as a player, he’ll definitely feel that if he gets regular opportunities going forward, he can achieve a lot. I’ve always liked left-handed batters at the top of the order, and even in the last match when he got a chance, he scored a half-century and batted well. He has the ability to do well. That’s why he gets five out of ten,” he added.
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