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Dinesh Karthik has been in and out of the Indian team over the past decade and half. I’ve played many roles as a batsman for the team. He has opened in Test cricket for India as well, but the crowning glory of his career remains his blitzkrieg in the final of the Nidahas Trophy against Bangladesh.
The T20 tri-series in March 2018 saw India and Bangladesh square off in the final. Bangladesh were yet to beat India in the shortest format and they gave themselves a good chance by putting on 166 runs.
India got off to a good start with stand-in captain Rohit Sharma leading from the front. But once Rohit got out India found themselves on a sticky wicket. Manish Pandey and Vijay Shankar failed to keep up with the asking rate on a sluggish surface. With the score reading 133 for 5 after 18 overs, in walked Dinesh Karthik, originally slated to bat much higher.
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India needed 34 runs off 12 balls and hopes had almost faded away. Karthik though wasn’t ready to throw in the towel and he launched a never seen before attack. The keeper batsman whacked Rubel Hossain for 22 runs in the penultimate over to bring the equation down to 12 needed off the last 6. Soumya Sarkar kept it tight in the last over and India finally needed 5 runs to win off the last ball with Karthik on strike.
Karthik hit the last delivery for flat six to take India to an improbable victory. He spoke about how I approached that 8-ball knock during an interview with Harsha Bhogle on Cricbuzz.
“When I went in I definitely had a plan. This is where practice helps you. You go over and over something and then you hit an auto mode. Going in knowing what you need to do gives you a better chance of achieving what you want to.
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“When I went in I believed I could do it and that set me up for what I needed to do to achieve it. That is when the programming sort of happened as to where he would bowl and where I would stand and which gap. If you want to be consistent as a finisher that is how you must think and that is how I programmed the entire innings.
When asked about how a batsman like him plans in that very miniscule response time when a bowler is coming in to bowl, Karthik said that players like him are dependent on clinically hitting the ball.
“We look to either get the gap or predict what the bowler is trying to do.
“So when you practice for long and watch enough videos and take into account factors like which side has the shorter boundary or what the bowler is going to do the chances of consistently doing what you are looking to do increases,” he said.
