India’s head coach Rahul Dravid believes keeper-batsman Dinesh Karthik has “vindicated” the selectors’ decision to call him up for the five T20Is against South Africa. Karthik’s comeback has been fueled by his eye-popping batting numbers for the Royal Challengers Bangalore in IPL 2022, where he smashed 330 runs at an incredible strike rate of 183.3, with 251 of those runs coming in the death overs (16 to 20) at an SR of 207.4. In the fourth T20I, India’s quest to see if he could replicate those numbers for the national team was a resounding success.
“He was picked for a very specific skill,” Dravid said. “He was picked for what he was doing exceptionally well over the last two-three years and it’s nice when that’s kind of vindicated in the sense that it almost came together brilliantly for us in that game in Rajkot where we needed that big performance in the last five overs to be able to make a par score.”
Dinesh Karthik in Rajkot played the magical innings when the Indian side craved for it the most. India were 81/4 by the end of 13 overs and only 7 overs were left with India batting at the run-rate of almost 6. Dinesh Karthik played a dominant innings of 55 runs off 27 deliveries which made the selectors think about him for the ICC T20 World Cup.
“He was picked for a very specific skill,” Dravid said on Sunday. “He was picked for what he was doing exceptionally well over the last two-three years and it’s nice when that’s kind of vindicated in the sense that it almost came together brilliantly for us in that game in Rajkot where we needed that big performance in the last five overs to be able to make a par score.”
“I was telling the guys, you have to start banging the door down, it’s not about knocking on the door. An innings like that certainly means he’s knocking very hard,” Dravid hailed.
