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Robin Uthappa reveals ‘younger brother’ Karun Nair stopped talking to him: ‘He didn’t check with me and believed it’
Robin Uthappa explained how a few out-of-context quotes from an interview in his playing days drove a wedge between himself and Karun Nair.
Robin Uthappa played 142 First Class cricket matches, but only 99 of those came for Karnataka, falling just short of a century of matches for his home team. Ending a 15-year journey with Karnataka in 2017, he spent the remainder of his career split between representing Saurashtra and Kerala. In an interview on the First Umpire podcast, he gave a tell-all account of the tensions within the team which led to him parting ways with the Karnataka team.
Speaking of his last couple of years in the Karnataka team in the Ranji Trophy, Uthappa explained how he was reaching some incredibly strong form, but was frustrated by how it didn’t earn him any attention from the Indian Test team selectors. He would go on to give an interview which reflected poorly on his then-teammate Karun Nair, who had just made his way into the Indian setup.
“At that point, I was trying to get into the Test team. I was frustrated because, despite performing well, I wasn’t even being considered. Maybe all of those emotions came out in the conversation,” explained Uthappa. “I said in the interview that Test caps were being given away too easily and that some people really needed to earn them rather than just being given them freely.”
Uthappa explained that his relationship with Nair to that point was brotherly, but having that snippet picked up and circulated when he was debuting for India put a strain on their relationship after presumptions were made that he was targeting the younger batter.
“Someone from our team took that piece of the interview and told Karun Nair that I had said it about him. Karun Nair, who was like a younger brother, alienated me at that time because he was close to getting a Test cap,” said Uthappa. “He didn’t check with me and believed it … Karun believed it and distanced himself from me.”
‘Organised attack’ worsened tensions
Uthappa was accused in the press of generating a rift in the team, but the former Indian wicketkeeper-batter remained adamant that he had no such intentions. However, he felt he had been subjected to an ‘organised attack’, and that subsequently led to a dip in his performances after a career-best spell.
“I told them if anyone thought I was breaking the team, they should raise their hand and I would quit immediately. Nobody raised a hand, but I knew then there was an organised attack because I had become the players’ voice,” he explained.
“So after that incident, I tried to give everything. Genuinely and consciously I tried to give everything, but it didn’t come,” said Uthappa. “And performances also didn’t come after that because that emotional tag of mine was broken.”
Uthappa would represent India nearly 60 times across the limited overs formats, including being a part of the 2007 T20 World Cup winning team, but never earned a Test cap. Having last played for India in 2015, he saw out his career domestically away from his home state of Karnataka.
