IPL 2018: Simon Katich Lavishes Praise On Dinesh Karthik
One of the biggest talking points during this year’s auction was Kolkata Knight Riders’ surprising decision to not retain Gautam Gambhir. The southpaw had transformed the underachievers into heavyweights during his seven-year stint with the Kolkata-based franchise.
Under Gambhir’s captaincy, the Kolkata Knight Riders qualified for the IPL playoffs and also made it to the Champions League Twenty20 for the first time.
In the following season, he led the side to their first title in 2012 by defeating defending champions, Chennai Super Kings.
Two years later, he led the team to their second title, making the Knight Riders one of the most successful teams in the leagues. Even in the last season, he led the side to a third-place finish in the league.
Gambhir was equally impressive with the bat. One of the most successful batsmen in the history of the league, Gambhir was the batting mainstay for the Knight Riders since joining the side. In the seven seasons, he had scored 3,035 runs with the help of 27 half-centuries.
However, for reasons only known known to the franchise and Gambhir, they parted ways this year. The franchise then sprung another big surprise by naming Dinesh Karthik as Gambhir’s successor. While there was no doubt at all regarding Karthik’s batting abilities, his captaincy credentials were far from being impressive.
But 14 games later, the decision has paid off rich dividends. Karthik has steered the Knight Riders into the playoffs with aplomb. The wicketkeeper-batsman has led from the front and will be keen to continue the fine job. The Knight Riders are now up against Rajasthan Royals in the Eliminator.
Speaking ahead of the game, their assistant coach Simon Katich was full of praise for Karthik. He also praised Karthik for getting a good grasp of the KKR ideology on the go in the last seven weeks.
“It is always difficult when you come to a new franchise and you have to learn on your feet in terms of how players go about it and probably our game style. The game style is probably a bit different to what he’s been used to, given the way we sort of match up with our batting and then I guess the structure of our team which is potentially three spinners all the time. I think he’s certainly learnt a lot I think in the last seven weeks about the group and the way we play,” Katich said.
“I think from his point of view, his batting has been outstanding, he’s been at the top of his game and he’s been magnificent. His keeping has been obviously good behind the stumps as well. From a captaincy point of view also he’s learnt a lot throughout the tournament and he’s starting to understand the group a lot better now than seven weeks ago when it was all a lot new to him. So, from that point of view we’ve been very lucky,” Katich opined.
Knight Riders’ captaincy was not the only topic that was widely-debated. Their 19-member squad that too with several youngsters caused quite a stir. After that, Mitchell Starc, bought for 9.4 Crore, was ruled out of the season.
“I know after the auction there was a lot of discussion about the size of our squad and the amount of youth we picked as well, as well as the experience. It is always going to be speculation as to how a squad is going to perform, but internally we were very confident of our squad. We’ve got a lot of guys who have IPL experience. If you look through our squad, there are eight or nine players that have played a lot of T20 cricket, IPL cricket and have had very successful careers,” said Katich.
“You throw in a couple of fresh faces, like the young Shivam Mavi or Shubman Gill or even Kuldeep Yadav, who is quite young, but he’s obviously playing international cricket. It’s an exciting squad, because there is a good blend there.
“We’ve had to do it the hard way at times, not having someone like Mitchell Starc, who pulled out. The way the guys have adapted has been excellent, the belief in the group has been very good as well, given that at times we didn’t play good cricket. It would’ve been easy to drop away and think maybe this is not our year, but to their credit, the belief in the group has been outstanding,” he added.
