Karun Nair, Shreyas Gopal transfer out of Karnataka
Karun Nair and Shreyas Gopal, two key members of Karnataka’s double-treble successful sides, have obtained NOCs from the KSCA to play for Vidarbha and Kerala, respectively, within the upcoming home season.
Nair, the previous Karnataka captain, scored 11 hundred and 16 fifties in first-class cricket for the state, with a better of 328 within the 2014-15 Ranji Trophy final towards Tamil Nadu. The weight of these runs in solely his second season put him in rivalry for a slot within the nationwide facet, with a Test debut coming a 12 months later, towards England, a sequence through which he turned solely the second Indian to attain a triple-hundred in Test cricket.
At Vidarbha, Nair might be reunited along with his one-time Karnataka teammate Ganesh Satish, with whom he received the Ranji Trophy for Karnataka in 2013-14. Nair will head into the brand new season on the again of a superb membership cricket stint within the UK.
In the time that Nair has discovered himself out, Karnataka have seen the emergence of two younger middle-order batters Nikin Jose and Vishal Onat. Jose had a breakthrough season, scoring 547 runs in 13 innings at a mean of 49.72 within the 2022-23 Ranji Trophy. His temperament got here in for particular plaudits, incomes him a call-up to the India A squad for the not too long ago concluded Emerging Asia Cup in Sri Lanka.
Onat batted in simply 5 innings, and had a mellower season compared, however the Karnataka selectors imagine he’s value investing in. The presence of those two younger batters, along with the skilled Mayank Agarwal, Devdutt Padikkal, R Samarth and Manish Pandey, might have made it troublesome for Nair to get common sport time.
Meanwhile, Shreyas’ transfer to Kerala comes at a time once they want to strengthen their spin-bowling core alongside Jalaj Saxena, their different skilled. Shreyas’ stint with Karnataka was no much less rewarding.
He broke by means of in 2013-14 and picked up a hat-trick against Rest of India to clinch the Irani Cup. For a greater a part of the subsequent 5 seasons, he was a key allrounder for Karnataka throughout codecs. However, not too long ago, because it occurred with Nair, common sport time eluded him, particularly within the white-ball codecs, which led him to search for alternatives elsewhere.