Karun Nair has disclosed that he chose to play village club cricket with Burbage & ER in East Wiltshire in 2023 after failing to secure a County contract following his unsold IPL auction.

He claimed in an interview on Monday that his teammates would frequently ask him "why the f**k" he was playing at that level since he was more than capable of winning the County Championship. The games were played every Saturday.

Nair, who had experienced a decline in form after being cut from the Indian squad in 2017 and excluded from the Karnataka state team, was going through one of his worst periods. After being dropped midway through a 2018 tour without being given a chance, Karun Nair was already determined to establish himself in England and took anything he could.

“I kept trying, and no one offered me a contract. After 2018, I always wanted to show that I could play in England. From where I was, it was so tough mentally. I’d wake up asking myself how I’d ended up here but I had to suck it up and play and train.

It’s like going from playing Champions League to below non-league in the space of a few years. Other players were telling me I should be playing county cricket and asking me why the f**k am I playing here," Karun Nair told Mail Sport.

Nair also recalled how he felt right away after Hanuma Vihari replaced him in the fourth Test match of the England tour, claiming that he immediately rushed to Oxford Street and made incredibly costly purchases in an attempt to cheer himself up.

“It felt like someone had hit me into the ground and I didn’t know where to go. ‘I’ll never forget that hour when the news hit me. I didn’t know what to do or who to talk to, so I went for a walk all the way to Oxford Street and started to buy anything and everything . I was never the sort of guy who was after expensive stuff, but it dawned on me that why am I waiting for things to happen when I have no control. ‘I got a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes because I could.

I’d never done that before. For me, it was never about money. My interest was purely cricket, and I wanted to play for India. But I needed to make myself feel happy, and I stupidly thought that would make me happy. I went up and down Oxford Street buying whatever I felt like and came back with bags after bags," he added.

However, after a wait of 8 years, Karun Nair has forced his way back into the Indian Test team on the basis of loads of runs in Indian domestic cricket and even in county cricket. He’s expected to start the first Test in Headingley on June 20.