Dinesh Karthik has played two fine innings in the warm up matches against Sri Lanka and Australia in the past five days: he has shown ability, creativity and a desire for batting challenges. Starting out of the middle order, just before Captain Dhoni, he has had the opportunity to experience testing situations on both occasions. And yet, he has come up trumps with a century on each instance - 106* vs Sri Lanka and 146 vs Australia - and taking his team out of strife and to victory. The outstanding character of these two innings were the blitheness of Karthik's spirit and innings under stressful conditions.
A friend of mine, N Balajhi, on the rare instances he has time enough to watch and chat cricket nowadays, has however kept track of Dinesh Karthik's progress this season, and has conveyed his opinion from time to time that 'DK' , as fans call him, could be sprung into the Indian team. He could do a Justin Langer, felt Balajhi. Appears his assessment over the preceding months is now transpiring.
With the Indian top order struggling in the two matches, DK has had the opportunity to play a newish ball with fresh bowlers. He has had time to build his innings, both of which he began determinedly and then unleashed his gears as he went along. This might tempt suggestions that he should play higher up the order, but he and MSD provide a degree of explosive solidity to the middle order in the current line up. Kohli has to be the ringmaster higher up.
The bowling was petty in the first match but sufficient for Sri Lanka. In contrast, the bowling was purposeful in the second match against Australia. India bundled out Australia for 65 runs and sent them to a 243 run defeat in a 50-over game; Yadav, Ishant, Bhuvanesh - they stuck to a cramping corridor line and the Australian batsmen obliged with temperamental horizontal shots which ended up only dragging the ball onto their wickets. Repeatedly, one after the other. There didn't appear to be an attempt by them to get the joints moving smoothly before sprinting. And this flaw made good, disciplined Indian bowling look that much better.
To say these are just practice matches, whether here or on social media, sensible as it may be, may not be prudent. But we'll drink this glass of sobering water and calm the heat down. Yes, these are just practice matches which India used better than the other two teams and things will be different ahead. Performances will have to be replicated under proper match conditions. Then there is the top order and general unreliability of the bowling discipline.
That said, a good practice session is always better than a poor one.
Good luck All - Good luck India - they kick of their campaign on coming Thursday with a match against South Africa on June 6th - the first of this Champions Trophy. 3.00pm IST.
~o~
