'Not looking far into future, you can get stuck': Karun Nair eyes career relaunch after struggles

Having tackled challenges of various nature Karun Nair is on a tough careerrebuilding process but the India batter does not want to look too far ahead as he feels it can make him stuck at one placeIt has been seven years since Karun has played a match for India but he has shown a bit of old fire in the last year or so garnering runs for Vidarbha and for Northamptonshire in English county cricketYou have to be prepared for the grind Its just about the next game And Im not looking too far into the future because sometimes you can get stuck in thinking about whats going to happen Karun told PTI here on WednesdayIve had scored a lot of runs in the last one year in all formats Ive just been trying to continue doing what Ive been doing the last one year on every given opportunity taking every opportunity as a new day he addedThe first hint of a positive turnaround in Karuns career came when he turned out for Northamptonshire in early 2023 when he made 249 runs from three matches at an average of 83 that contained a hundred against eventual champions SurreyAlso ReadICC Test rankings Kohli Jaiswal move up in latest rankings Rohit drops to 6thThis year Karun aggregated 487 runs from seven matches at an average of 49 including a century against GlamorganThese are not mindblowing numbers but good enough to instil oodles of confidence in a batsman who was struggling to find some purpose in his craftYou are playing with a different ball there literally Everyone knows for Indian batsmen to go and score runs in England to play the moving ball is tough So Ive learnt a lot more about myself as a batsman and finding ways to score runs and believing in yourselfThere are so many things that Ive learnt in England that you know maybe I had it in me but I didnt realise all this while he notedThen came the move to Vidarbha from Karnataka during the last domestic season and it came at the right time for himThe righthander was getting frustrated at not getting enough games in his home state but all that changed once he moved to VidarbhaHe made 690 runs from 10 matches with two hundreds helping his side to reach the Ranji Trophy semifinalsFirst of all its the opportunity to play in the Ranji Trophy cricket which I missed out for a year for reasons that I dont know So I am really thankful to Vidarbha for giving me the opportunity to play firstclass cricket So the aim is to improve on last year and go one step further And you know hopefully we can win a couple of trophies he saidThe 32yearold was understandably disappointed at not getting a firstclass match for a full season but he found a shard of positive in that gloom tooIts obviously been a difficult time for me But probably that one season taught me how to value each gameiquestpractice harder do everything smarter I think that nonplaying season has made me stronger and more determined to do well in each and every game he saidNo matter what happens its kind of made me I dont know brought some kind of fire in yourself So just like I said Im happy with the way Im batting I want to keep continuing this wayBut the last year has also rekindled Karuns dream of walking back into the Indian dressing roomYes of course Everyone plays this game to go out there and represent your country and thats my only aim now to play Test cricket again which I think Im very confident that I can I know that Im good enough he saidBut for now Karun would like to cap the good beginning to a new season with a title triumph in the ongoing KSCA Maharaja T20 with the Mysore WarriorsWeve crossed the first step that is to qualify for the semis which is something that we set out to do when we started the tournament he signed offWith agency inputs