Dinesh Karthik

Full name: Krishna Kumar Dinesh Karthik
Born: June 1, 1985, Madras (now Chennai), Tamil Nadu
Major teams: India, India A, India Under-19s, Indian Board President's XI, Tamil Nadu

Batting style: Right-hand bat
Fielding position: Wicketkeeper

Test debut: India v Australia at Mumbai - Nov 3-5, 2004

ODI debut: England v India at Lord's - Sep 5, 2004

Twenty20 debut: South Africa v India at Johannesburg - Dec 1, 2006

PROFILE
Dinesh Karthik started playing cricket at the age of 10 under the coaching of his father Krishna Kumar. His father, a first division cricket player from Chennai always wanted his son to excel in cricket. He had suffered when he was forced to put studies ahead of cricket and didn't want his son to face the same. So training under his father, Karthik, made his first class debut at a young age of 17 for Tamil Nadu. Initially he was just a batsman but he added wicketkeeping to his game to give himself better future prospects. Robin Singh also regarded him as having very high level of fitness.

In his first first class season, Karthik couldn't make a mark. Though his batting was pretty good and he averaged over 35, his regular mistakes behind the wicket went against him and he was dropped for the final matches. So to improve his wicketkeeping he joined an off-season wicketkeeping camp under the guidance of India's former wicketkeeper and the then chief selector Kiran More. He came back as a better and wicketkeeper and batsman as he accumulated 438 runs and took 20 catches. This also included a century in both semi-final and final of the Ranji Trophy.

Despite such good performances, Dinesh was ignored for the South Zone team for the Duleep Trophy. But Dinesh Karthik continued his good run as he scored a gritty 70 off 39 balls in the under 19 cricket world cup in Bangladesh. At last Kartik was selected in the national team after the selectors decided to cease using Rahul Dravid as a part time wicketkeeper. So he made his ODI debut in sept, 2004 but was out for just 1 run. His continuing batting slump forced the selectors to drop him and the lad from the state of Jharkhand, MS Dhoni took over his place in the one day side.

Karthik made his test debut in the late 2004 against Australia after Parthiv Patel was dropped due to poor form. Though he could add only 16 runs and 2 catches to his kitty, he was praised for his wonderful wicketkeeping. His memorable innings came in early 2005 when he scored an outstanding 93 against Pakistan at the Eden Gardens. However his batting didn't show the required promise and MS Dhoni took over his place.

After being dropped from both the teams, Karthik remained out of international arena for over a year. Meantime he played first class cricket to improve his batting skills. Owing to his regular good performances at the first class level, Karthik was recalled to the ODI team in April, 2006 mainly to give Dhoni some rest. With Yuvraj Singh injured in late 2006, he was included in the team as a specialist batsman. Though he was not played in all the matches, he proved himself in every game he played. He even bagged his first man of the match for his score of 63 against WestIndies at the Barabati Stadium. Such good form has also awarded this youngster a place in the Indian squad for the world cup 2007
View Karthik's stats at http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/india/content/player/30045.html