India, Jan. 15 -- Nitish Kumar Reddy has played only 17 matches for India, but his career can be divided into two halves. One being his debut series in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and the other, post it. Nitish's performance Down Under was one of India's very few positives on the tour. Reddy took five wickets and scored 298 runs across the five matches, including a memorable maiden century at Melbourne's Boxing Day Test. He may not have scored many fifties, but he had plenty of 30s and 40s to lead India's revival in the lower order. An injury sidelined him for months, but the belief was that once he was back, Reddy would continue his upward climb.

Surprisingly enough, that didn't happen. And if anything, Reddy's graph dipped as he's strug...