“My biggest change came around in 2016 when I met…” - Dinesh Karthik reveals how he reinvented himself during the fag end of his career

Former Indian keeper-batter Dinesh Karthik has revealed how things turned in his favour after he met Abhishek Nayar back in 2016, adding that he started training differently, adapting to a role that not many would want to do.

Speaking exclusively on the ‘Beard Before Wicket’ Podcast, Karthik asserted that he took up the finisher’s role despite knowing that the chances of failing exponentially increase as he gets to play only a few balls in the death overs.

“So my biggest change came around in 2016 when I met Abhishek Nayar. That's when I started training differently. We almost adopted a new role that no one heard of because it's a role that not many would want to do because the chances of failing exponentially increase, which is to be a finisher. Basically, you'll play eight balls and you try to make a match out of it. Who wants to do that? All batters want to bat more deliveries so they can get set and score volumes of runs. We went the other way around, said let's do something that not many people want to carve a niche out of,” Dinesh Karthik said on the ‘Beard Before Wicket’ Podcast.

“I'm no Pollard or Russell, you know, with big body where I can mishit and go for a six. I needed to be clever and innovative with that. So, we started training for a few years, and it wasn't a niche that people accepted at that point because probably my failures are more than my successes,” he added.

In IPL 2022, RCB roped in the keeper-batter, and Karthik went on to score 330 runs in that season in 16 innings at an average of 55 and a strike rate of 183.33. Later, he made a comeback to the Indian team for the ICC T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia.

“But by the time I reached 2022, I had found the best version of myself playing that role, and and RCB picked me in that auction. And the beauty about RCB, credit to them, was they picked me purely for that role. That is all they expected out of me. Go in the last five years, do your thing, and I was all set for it. Went in there, the clarity was there, and I went in and did the best that I could. So I did it so well that I ended up playing for the country again in the T20 World Cup in Australia. So that's why it was almost a bit of a redemption arc for me,” he concluded.

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