IPL 2018, RR vs KKR: Hits and Misses

#3 Hit: Dinesh Karthik

Karthik looked in excellent touch in his 23-ball innings

Dinesh Karthik has looked a completely different player in the last few months. He has been hitting the ball really well and has donned the finisher’s role beautifully.

Karthik was appointed as the captain of KKR and it was always going to be interesting to see how he goes about things. He’s done really well so far after a few tactical blunders in the first few games. In this match, the Tamil Nadu wicket-keeper was excellent, both as captain and batsman.

On the field, he was proactive, making important field changes and shuffling the bowlers around. He used his resources excellently and one of his master-strokes has been giving Nitish Rana the ball (he Delhi player has taken 4 wickets in the 2 games he’s bowled). He was superb behind the stumps as well. His stumping to dismiss Ajinkya Rahane was simply superb.

And then with the bat, he calmly came in and scored an excellent 42 in 23 balls (2 fours and 2 sixes) to finish the chase. With 59 runs required in 45 balls, Karthik came in and started rotating the strike very well. He was very fluent throughout the innings. He had the tendency of throwing away his starts but here he took KKR home with a calm knock.