Abhishek Nayar moves to Puducherry

“I was in talks with them (Puducherry). On Saturday, I took my NOC from the Mumbai Cricket Association and this morning submitted it to the BCCI. So, I kind of hit the nail in the coffin,” Nayar said confirming that he will play for Puducherry.

Nayar, 34, scored 5,627 runs in the 99 first class games with 259 being his highest score. He has hit 13 hundreds and 31 fifties and snapped 164 wickets with best figures of 7/131. Nayar had earlier refused an offer to coach Pondicherry.

“No, it wasn’t a hard decision,” he said when asked how tough it was to shift from Mumbai. “I just thought about it and wanted to be certain about what I am doing and how I can contribute to Puducherry, so I took some time before taking a decision.” Nayar said he opted for Puducherry as he did not want to take someone’s place in a team. “One of the reasons why I opted for Puducherry is that I felt it’s a new team, new culture, I was not taking anyone’s place,” he said. “I wanted to go to a team where I didn’t take someone’s place. Even the players there, I feel will be happy.” Nayar had played his last first class match for Mumbai against Andhra at Ongole in November last year and now looks set to play his 100th first-class match for Puducherry.