Dinesh Karthik sympathises with Wriddhiman Saha; praises Rishabh Pant

India wicket-keeper Wriddhiman Saha has currently found himself at the centre of a storm over reports that the Team India management has decided to move on to the future. The 37-year-old Bengal gloveman has reportedly been discarded from India’s Test team, an incident that has caused an uproar in the country’s cricketing circles.

Veteran India wicket-keeper-batter Dinesh Karthik on Tuesday, March 1, spoke out on the matter saying while he understood that it would have been a “hard one to swallow” for Saha but was less surprised with the call as the young Rishabh Pant had “pretty much nailed his place in the side”.

Karthik praised Saha’s wicket-keeping skills but said, “But you can see Rishabh Pant has pretty much nailed his place in the team. So then, you can understand which direction the Indian team is going in where they feel that if it’s going to be a second keeper role, then they’ll look at somebody younger.”

Saha has been overlooked for India’s upcoming two-Test series against Sri Lanka at home and KS Bharat has got the call as the second keeper in the squad besides Pant.

In a sympathetic voice towards Saha who has played 40 Tests for the country since 2010 in which he has effected 104 dismissals (92 catches and 12 stumpings) besides scoring three hundreds, Karthik said it was not easy for a cricketer to accept rejection.

‘No cricketer going to accept that when you’re being told to move on’

“I’m pretty sure from wherever I’ve seen with Wriddhiman’s interviews, he understands where this decision is coming from,” he said in the ICC Review.

“I know no cricketer is going to accept that when you’re being told to move on. It is a very hard one because this is what they’ve been doing day in and day out,” the cricketer from Tamil Nadu who played his last match for India in the 2019 ICC World Cup said.

While he praised Saha over his contributions to Indian cricket and rated him as “one of the best wicket-keepers in the world by a distance”, he also said that the team management could not ignore the emergence of Pant, junior to Saha by 13 years.

Pant has often been called the successor to the legendary Mahendra Singh Dhoni, especially because of his batting exploits.

“Just like MS Dhoni came in all those years ago, we’ve had a Rishabh Pant who’s come in over the last couple of years and has done really well,” Karthik said, adding, “When that happens, Saha has obviously become the second wicketkeeper and he has been travelling with the team and playing the odd match here and there.”

Saha recently revealed he was told by India head coach Rahul Dravid that the team has decided to move on from the former.