The quarterfinals of the Vijay Hazare Trophy (VHT) 2024–25 ended today, leaving just four teams remaining. There have been some noteworthy performances, including Karun Nair‘s, and the semi-finals are scheduled to begin on January 15. Throughout the competition, the Vidarbha captain has been playing with great style.
Karun Nair has put on some of his best performances in domestic cricket this season despite not playing much international cricket.
In the quarterfinal match against Rajasthan, the 33-year-old reached his fourth consecutive century, continuing his purple patch in VHT. He also became just the third Indian batsman to score four consecutive hundreds in List A cricket, following Tamil Nadu’s star Narayan Jagadeesan and Karnataka’s Devdutt Padikkal. In the VHT, he also tied Jagadeesan’s record of five hundreds.
In reference to the game, the Rajasthani squad scored a respectable 291 runs. But with openers Dhruv Shorey and Yash Rathod scoring 92 runs for the first wicket, the Nair-led Vidarbha team had other ideas.
Following Rathod’s dismissal, the captain of Vidarbha joined Shorey in celebrating and struck yet another amazing century. Nair scored 122 runs off just 82 deliveries to become undefeated. Vidarbha won the match by nine wickets in the end, which was sufficient to advance them to the semi-finals. Nair finished with a strike rate of 148.78 after hitting 13 fours and five sixes in his innings.
With 664 runs from six innings at an incredible average of 664, Nair is now the leading run scorer in the VHT as of this innings. It’s safe to say that Nair has led from the front in this tournament, and this is his dream run in domestic cricket. Karnataka captain Mayank Agarwal (619 runs from eight innings) and Punjab’s wicketkeeper-batter Prabhsimran Singh (498 runs from eight innings) are the next two players on the run chart.
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