Karun Nair finds IPL Mojo after the pleasure of selection of India.

Karun Nair hadn’t played an Indian Premier League (IPL) match in 3 years. Coming from a record-breaking run in domestic cricket, the 33-year-old played a breathtaking 89-run knock to restart his IPL career. The key feature of Karun’s knock was him taking down Jasprit Bumrah.

That knock was played on April 13, about a month before the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was to announce India’s squad for the England Test series. His well-wishers assumed that if Karun’s form held up, he would be on the flight to England.

In the next 6 innings, Karun managed to score just 75 runs. He was dropped by Delhi Capitals midway as well. He entered double digits thrice but just couldn’t kick on. In Delhi’s last match of the IPL 2025 season, they decided to give Karun another chance. Perhaps to gauge whether they want to retain him for the next edition or not.

Karun Nair shows Test selection confidence

Karun hadn’t played a match since May 5. But he was feeling as good as he ever had. Why? Well, because the BCCI had just named him in India’s squad for England a few hours ago. And Karun entered the Jaipur Stadium with the confidence of a man who had been selected to play for India after 8 years.

Chasing 207, Delhi needed someone to stay in the middle for a while. And Karun did just that. He fell just 6 short of scoring his second fifty of IPL 2025 but it was good enough to keep Delhi in the game. Things had gotten slow after both KL Rahul and Faf du Plessis departed and Karun got them back on track.

First he hit Praveen Dubey for 4 consecutive fours in the 11th over and then tried to take Marco Jansen and Harpreet Brar on. With Sameer Rivzi in full flow from the other end, it looked like Delhi would win their last match of the season. And that happened, even though Karun couldn’t stay in the middle for longer.