Picture Credit: X
On his return to Test cricket in Indian colours after eight long years, Karun Nair, the right-handed batter, lost his wicket without troubling the scorers during the first Test of the five-match series against England at Headingley in Leeds. The 33-year-old, who had scored a triple hundred for India against England in 2016, didn’t have the best of starts on a decent pitch for batting, where the likes of Yashasvi Jaiswal, captain Shubman Gill, and Rishabh Pant scored hundreds.
After playing three dots to start his innings, Karun Nair got a length delivery outside the off stump from Ben Stokes, to which he went for the drive without quite getting to the pitch of it. He managed to loft the ball in the air towards the cover region where Ollie Pope flew to his left to take a fantastic catch with his right hand, putting an abrupt end to the innings on zero in four balls.
The dismissal of Karun Nair led to a mini collapse of sorts in the Indian batting ranks in their first innings, losing four wickets for just 24 runs before lunch on day two was called. As of this writing, India have reached 454/7 in 108.4 overs with Ravindra Jadeja new to the crease with three tail-enders still to make their way to the crease in the post-lunch session.
Check out some of the fan reactions on X after Karun Nair was dismissed for zero:
Below are the playing XIs of England and India for the first Test at Headingley in Leeds:
England: Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ben Stokes (c), Jamie Smith (wk), Chris Woakes, Brydon Carse, Josh Tongue, Shoaib Bashir
India: Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill (c), Rishabh Pant (wk), Karun Nair, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Prasidh Krishna, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj
