Batting great Ricky Ponting is impressed with Dinesh Karthik’s finishing abilities and believes that the veteran keeper-batter can play the role of a finisher for the Indian team in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia. Karthik forced his way back into the Indian team at the age of 37 on the back of a sensational IPL outing as a finisher for Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Karthik was phenomenal for RCB this season, taking on the bowlers at the death. Karthik scored 330 runs at a strike rate of 183.
“I would have him, and I’d have him in at that five or six role,” Ponting told Isa Guha in The ICC Review.
“The way that he finished games for RCB this year, he took his game to another level. When you look at the IPL, you want your better players to maybe be able to win two or three, maybe four games through the season. If you can get that out of them, it’s probably going to be a really good return. But Dinesh probably had a bigger impact on a lot of the games than most of the other RCB players did this year.
“Virat (Kohli) having the year he’s had, Maxi (Glenn Maxwell) started the tournament really well but DK was the one. And Faf too I guess, who kept the RCB bandwagon rolling. I’d be surprised if he’s not in there (India) line-up somewhere,” Ponting added.
