2017 ICC Champions Trophy: 5 reasons why Dinesh Karthik deserves to play ahead of Yuvraj Singh
After a comprehensive win over New Zealand in their first warm-up match, India registered another convincing win in their final warm-up game by thrashing Bangladesh by 240 runs. India had a poor start to their innings as they lost Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane early. However, Shikhar Dhawan and Dinesh Karthik restored stability in the Indian innings by adding 100 for the third wicket. Dhawan scored 60 before being dismissed by Sunzamul Islam.
Dinesh Karthik continued to play finely, building a partnership of 75 with Kedar Jadhav before the latter was dismissed. Karthik went on to score 94 before retiring out at the end of the 35th over. A smashing innings of 80 from Hardik Pandya helped India register a total of 324/7 in their 50 overs.
In reply, Bangladesh were never in the chase as Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Umesh Yadav tore apart their batting and reduced them to 35/6. A few chippings from Mehedi Hasan and Sunzamul Islam could only take their innings to 84 and India had won the match convincingly.
Also read: ICC Champions Trophy 2017: 4 lessons learnt by India in the warm-up matches
There was no Man of the Match award since warm-up matches are not considered as actual ODI matches but one performance that was really delightful to watch was that of Dinesh Karthik’s who batted beautifully before retiring out.
Karthik was an eleventh-hour addition to the India’s Champions Trophy squad after Manish Pandey was ruled out of the tournament due to injury. The Tamil Nadu player was dismissed for a duck against New Zealand but made up for that through his sensational innings against Bangladesh.
Karthik’s innings will definitely keep Virat Kohli in a dilemma as to who to keep in the playing XI between him and Yuvraj Singh. Yuvraj has been cleared to play the tournament after illness ruled him out of the New Zealand game.
Here are five reasons why Dinesh Karthik deserves a spot in the Playing XI ahead of the southpaw:
#5 Better form in the IPL
Gujarat Lions had a disastrous IPL campaign this year, as they ended the tournament second from bottom. However, Dinesh Karthik had a good tournament personally as he scored 361 runs from 13 innings at an average of 36.10 and at an impressive strike rate of 139.38 with a 34-ball 65 against Delhi Daredevils at Delhi being his highest score.
Even though a number of his best batting performances during the tournament came in a losing cause, Karthik added depth to the Gujarat Lions middle-order and made significant contributions with the bat most of the time.
On the other hand, Sunrisers Hyderabad made it to the play-offs but Yuvraj’s performance during the tournament was affected by lack of fitness as he produced only sporadic batting performances during the tournament, scoring 252 runs at an average of 28 and at a strike rate of 142.37. Karthik had a more consistent tournament compared to Yuvraj Singh and this should be a factor that should be taken into consideration while choosing India’s playing XI against Pakistan.