Well, after the announcement of the squads for the upcoming series against Australia, the major surprise has been the exclusion of Dinesh Karthik from the team. With the debates reaching sky-high, we figured out 4 possible reasons behind his ouster from the team.
Here are they:
4. Workload management:
Perhaps, the Board of Control for Cricket in India is trying to manage the workload of the players ahead of the ICC World Cup 2019. Though Dinesh Karthik hasn’t played much red-ball cricket, he has been the part of limited overs in Australia and New Zealand.
Besides that, Dinesh Karthik is the skipper of Kolkata Knight Riders, which means that, most probably, he will be playing all the games for the franchise. Perhaps, the Indian selectors might felt that this would be the time to rest him and also try out a few experiments.
3. To Check The Standard Of Rishabh Pant In ODI format:
Earlier, after the Test series against Australia, Ravi Shastri asked Rishabh Pant to work on match-finishing skills in the ODI format. Perhaps, they would like to have one final look at him in the series against Australia. If he comes good, it would be a great benefit for the team in various ways.
The addition of Pant will certainly bring a left-hand option in the middle and also, he got brilliant hitting skills. Perhaps, it could be one of the reasons to exclude Dinesh Karthik from the team.
2. Dropped for his poor show:
Yet another strong reason could be his poor show with the bat in the recent tours to Australia and New Zealand. In both the series, he failed to garner runs to his name. Though he got fewer chances to prove himself in Australia, in New Zealand, he got a couple of glorious chances to press his case further. Unfortunately, he failed to grab a hold of those chances.
In Australia, he bagged 37 runs in 2 innings while in New Zealand, he scored 38 runs in 2 innings. Besides that, his poor fielding also affected India on a few occasions. The selection panel might have considered those failures to drop him from the team.
1. To try KL Rahul at 3 and Virat Kohli at 4:
One of the top reasons behind his removal could be is to test KL Rahul at number 3 and Virat Kohli at number 4. Clearly, India can’t rely their trust on Karthik at Number 3, which might have pushed selectors to have a look on KL Rahul at number 3 slot.
As KL Rahul already got a decent experience at number 3, India can happily ask the Indian skipper to bat at number 4. This would certainly clear a lot of issues for the team. In order to test that, the only loop for India is to remove Dinesh Karthik from the team and embed KL Rahul at the top.
Recently, Ravi Shastri has been pretty vocal on Virat Kohli batting at number 4 in ICC World Cup 2019. If KL Rahul comes good in the upcoming series, most probably, the same line-up would be repeated for the grand event.
