Credit: BCCI
The best comeback story in Cricket this year without a doubt is Karun Nair. 3006 days is what it took. One of the most heart warming stories of Indian cricket was the much anticipated return of Karun Nair. In the middle of 2025, Karun Nair was back where it all began in England, with the Indian Test team, eight years after he was dropped despite scoring a triple century in his first series. He was 25 back then and since then fought many battles and finally he made a comeback at 33.
When he was dropped from the Indian side he was going through a very bad phase. In 2022, the silence became louder. He was dropped from Karnataka’s Ranji side, a team he had once he captained. Opportunities dried up for him and he went unsold in Indian Premier League (IPL). He took it to twitter and posted “Dear cricket, give me one more chance.” At the time, it barely made rounds on social media. But fast forward to 2024, when he began dominating the domestic circuit again, the tweet went viral on social media.
After being sidelined by Karnataka, he moved to Vidarbha with grit and determination. 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. In 2023 and 2024, he took went to England, first with a local club, then with Northamptonshire in the County Championship. There he scored 249 runs in three matches in 2023, followed by 487 in seven the next year, including a double hundred.
By the 2024–25 season, Karun was unstoppable. He topped the Vijay Hazare Trophy charts with 779 runs at an 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 season. A strong 2024/25 domestic season where he scored 863 runs at an average of 54, guiding Vidarbha to the Ranji Trophy earned Karun a recall for the five-Test series against England.
“Life has come a full circle because I went out of the team in England and now I am coming back into the team in England,” Karun told BCCI. “Playing alongside Rahul and Prasidh is also a very comforting factor. We’ve played cricket for so many years since probably we were young kids and grew up together.” Karun Nair’s comeback in 2025 could not go as per plans as he could not perform well enough in England but the fact that he was picked up by Delhi Capitals for 2025 and dominated domestic and got picked up by India in itself is a great achievement and his comeback story is the one 2025 threw at us, and it was a beautiful one as fans were right behind Karun Nair.
