His mother had a fear of watching him play, thinking if she watches him, her son would get out cheaply. Karun Nair put all those fears to rest on Monday when he scored a triple ton and joined Virender Sehwag as only the second Indian to score a triple century in tests. In just his third innings, Nair struck an unbeaten 303, in India’s gargantuan total of 759 against England, leading some to compare England’s agony to that endured by ‘Ralph Fiennes in the English Patient’.
Here are 10 things to know about the cricketer:
1) Karun Kaladharan Nair is a right-handed batsman and off break bowler. He was a member of Royal Challengers Bangalore squad in the 2013 Indian Premier League.
2) He is a Jodhpur born Keralite who plays for Karnataka at the state level.
2) Nair’s coach at the Frank Anthony School remembers him as a ‘quiet boy focussed on his practice’. “Those days we used to practice from 6 am to 8 am and again from 3.30 pm to 5.30 pm. He would practice diligently, never missing a day. In the days when there was no practice at school, he used to attend classes at the Koramangala cricket club near his house,” he said.
3) This wasn’t Nair’s first game-changing score on debut. In 2013-14, the player played an instrumental part in sweeping the Ranji and Irani titles for Karnataka.
4)He hit centuries in three successive Ranji matches, including the quarter-finals and the semi-finals, and also hit the winning six that ended Karnataka’s 15-year-wait for a Ranji title.
5) In the 2016 IPL auction, Nair cashed in big time, selling for Rs 4 crore to Delhi Daredevils – 40 times his base price of Rs 10 lakh.
6) He may have hit a triple ton, but the Karnataka batsman wasn’t even part of the original squad for this test series. He came in as a replacement for the injured K. L. Rahul for the third test.He retained his place in the team, thanks to a freak injury to Ajinkya Rahane.
7)At 25 years and 13 days, Nair also broke Sehwag’s record of being the youngest Indian Test triple-centurion. Sehwag, had been 25 years and 160 days in 2004 when he hit 309 against Pakistan in Multan.
8)Karun Nair’s triple ton also helped India go past their highest ever total in Test matches.
9) His 303 not out against England in the fifth match of the series was also only the third time a batsman crossed the three-hundred mark with a maiden century, Only cricketing greats like Garry Sobers and Bob Simpson have previously achieved the rare feat.
10) Nair’s score is also the highest for an Indian number five in Tests. He overtook the record set by Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who smashed 224 against Australia in Chennai in 2013.
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