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Dinesh Kartik makes his return to the Indian Test Team after Eight long years

Dinesh Kartik makes his return to the Indian Test Team after Eight long years

The wicketkeeper-batsman from Tamil Nadu Dinesh Kartik is finally making his return to the Indian Test team after a long interval of eight years. In the historic first test of Afganishtan against India  in Bangalore Dinesh Kartik has replaced Wriddhiman Saha as he was ruled out of the team due to injury.

“Just the fact that I couldn’t at that stage produce enough performances to hold on to my place [frustrates me]. I think I need to be honest with myself. I think I wasn’t as good then. I have another opportunity now and I guess I will try to do my best,” he said after not getting to play in the team.

The wicketkeeper Kartik was part of the Indian test team back in 2010 where he played his 23rd test match against Bangladesh. And in 8 years of his absence the Indian team had played 87 test matches till now in the leadership of MS Dhoni. Back in the year 2010 Kartik was replaced by the capable MS Dhoni under whose leadership India won 2 world cups and escalated up the world cricket rankings. After Dhoni’s retirement from the test cricket Wriddhiman Saha replaced him and donned the white and we saw Saha as one of India’s most technically accomplished wicketkeepers. After being ruled out of the team the man didn’t stop his game, he kept practicing and not once did he doubt his skills and we saw that when Kartik scored solid numbers up the scoreboard in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2018 and led his team Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) to the quarter finals of the League. And now Kartik makes his return in the Test team as Saha was injured. Hopefully Kartik is in top of his form and we can expect big numbers and bigger performance from the man.

He said he left his place to a special cricketer as Dhoni for whom he has nothing but respect, about Dhoni he said “I did not perform well enough and wasn’t consistent enough. There was a highly competitive environment. MS Dhoni was breathing down my neck and who was causing a lot of stir in world cricket at that point of time. He has gone on to become probably one of the greatest Test cricket captains India has ever produced. So, it’s not that I lost out my place to some normal cricketer. He has been a special cricketer over a period and I respect him for that.”

“As a senior player, they expect you to perform well. Along the way if I could help out young guys, great. That was my mentality. End of the day, it’s always been great to represent a team like that, for them to have put up with me and backed me Today I’m really happy where I’m sitting,” he said getting his place back to the test team.

India’s Test Squad against Afganisthan: Ajinkya Rahane (Captain), Cheteshwar Pujara, Shikhar Dhawan, Murali Vijay, Lokesh Rahul, Karun Nair, Kuldeep Yadav, Umesh Yadav, Ishant Sharma, Shardul Thakur, Navdeep Saini, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Hardik Pandya, Dinesh Karthik (wk)

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Aman Kumar Singh

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