Know Your Player – Dinesh Karthik
Cricketing milestones, rise through the ranks, trials and tribulations and their glamorous lifestyles – we cover it all in ‘Know Your Player’, a brand-new section aimed at keeping you updated with everything you need to know! In this edition, we take a look at India’s dynamic wicketkeeper-batsman who has featured prominently in all three formats of the game, Dinesh Karthik.
The Rise
Karthik was born in Madras (now Chennai), Tamil Nadu. He began taking his cricket seriously at the age of 10, after living in Kuwait for two years. He was initially coached by his father, who was a first-division cricketer from Chennai. Karthik started his career as a batsman and learned wicket-keeping in the Tamil Nadu youth teams.
Karthik steadily rose through the age-group cricket. He made his Tamil Nadu under-14 debut in early 1999 and was promoted to the under-19 side at the beginning of the 2000/2001 season. He made his first-class debut against Baroda as a wicket-keeper in 2002.
In the 2003–04 Ranji Trophy, Karthik scored 438 runs (an average of 43.80), with two centuries, and took 20 catches. His hundreds were scored in the semi-final and the final against Railways and Mumbai respectively. These performances placed him on the radar of the national selectors.
Karthik was soon selected in the India squad in the 2004 Under-19 Cricket World Cup in Bangladesh. He also scored two half-centuries while representing India A on their tour to Zimbabwe. In the same year, he made his ODI debut at the Lords against England and Test debut against Australia in Mumbai.
Career highlights
Off the field:
Karthik is as jovial and as chirpy off the field as much on it. He also participated in the dance reality show “Ek Khiladi Ek Hasina” with Nigaar Khan in 2008. Karthik got engaged to Indian squash player Dipika Pallikal in November 2013, and they married in traditional Christian and Hindu ceremonies in August 2015. The wicketkeeper-batsman went through a lean patch in 2016 and made a sensational comeback with Mumbai cricketer Abhishek Nayar mentoring him.
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