Bravo Karun Nair! What a gritty half-century when his team and he needed it the most!
Hats off to the perseverance and patience- a streak of failures following a comeback into the national side after a gap of more than 3,000 days, Nair gets a Test fifty after 3,146 days – finally, he seems to have got a hold over his rhythm.
Congo bro! As Nair, who is one of two Indian triple centurions in Tests, gears up for a big one against England at the Oval on August 1, the Karnataka star’s poetic redemption contrasts sharply with the agonising fate of his teammate Abhimanyu Easwaran.
The Dehradun batter who represents Bengal must be pondering over the reasons behind such a protracted wait to don the whites for India.
It’s been ages – well, just three years, a cynic would broach, but hey three years – goodness that’s quite a tedious period to test somebody’s patience.
Guess what! Inducted into the Test squad in 2022, Easwaran has had to witness the debuts of 15 players who were preferred over him.
Mind you, we are discussing a man who has a staggering average of 48.70 in 103 first-class matches with 27 hundreds.
Alas, the 29-year-old is still waiting in the wings despite some of his compatriots, whom he even led at the India A level, making the cut.
Now can’t help it or restrain his irate father from venting his ire.
“I’m not keeping a count of the number of days that Abhimanyu has been waiting for his Test debut. I am counting the years; it has been three years now. What is the job of a player? It is to score runs. He has done that. People said he didn’t perform in two India A matches during the last tour of Australia and didn’t get into the team, which is fair enough. But Karun Nair wasn’t in the team during the period when Abhimanyu performed before the BGT. Karun wasn’t picked for the Duleep Trophy or the Irani Trophy. Abhimanyu scored close to 864 runs if you consider the period from last year to the current year,” Ranganathan Easwaran told a leading website.
And the Easwaran Senior adds that his son is depressed. Now isn’t that natural?
Okay fine, the opening slots are booked but what about the Number 3? Nair flopped, so did Sai Sudarshan, yet the team management’s prudence goes for a toss and even at Oval, Easwaran is asked to warm the benches.
Well, the stylish right-handed batter isn’t getting any younger and chances are that he might end up losing out on that coveted India cap much like Rajinder Goel and Padmakar Shivalkar – two legendary spinners who were deprived of a look-in because of the unconquerable presence of the spin quartet – BS Bedi, EAS Prasanna, B Chandrasekhar and S Venkataraghavan.
Easwaran, however, is unluckier (if we may use this term). Deserving to be in the middle, an obstinate bias is turning out to be his bane or impediment.
Surprisingly, Easwaran, who has a stadium named after him in Dehradun, receives little support from the powers that be in his state association and former cricketers from Bengal.
The undisputed face of Bengal cricket, Sourav Ganguly, bats for Kuldeep Yadav but why isn’t he vocal against the injustice meted out to a Bengal cricketer?
What is also reprehensible is the complete apathy from the media and fans in Bengal. Didn’t cricket buffs in Kolkata and the rest of Bengal hit the streets when their favourite Dada was supposedly sidelined by coach Greg Chappell?
Why are they silent now? Is it because of Easwaran’s non-Bengali lineage?
The Oval Test is the last of the series, which means Easwaran’s wait only gets prolonged.
Fingers crossed if he at all gets to show his mettle for the country but if he’s deprived, then it should shake our conscience.
But who cares? Haven’t we had so many Easwarans in Indian cricket? Indian cricket reaches the zenith and Easwaran will be left by the wayside as we frenzied fans bask in the team’s glorious deeds.
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The show will go on but deep down, the batter who is all class would be silently fulminating as he slips into the twilight of his career unless, of course, a World Cup-winner (now the Headmaster), never short of words against wrongdoings, wakes up from his slumber.
And he will only have himself to share the ‘torment’ with?
“Where did I go wrong?” Don’t know Abhi!
