Dinesh Karthik sympathises with Wriddhiman Saha, but says Rishabh Pant nailed his place in Team India
Veteran India wicketkeeper batter Dinesh Karthik on Tuesday said he could understand it would have been a “hard one to swallow” for Wriddhiman Saha when the team management decided to move on from him but said the call was pretty understandable as Rishabh Pant had “pretty much nailed his place in the side.”
Dinesh Karthik has opened up on Wriddhiman Saha's exclusion from the Indian Test squad on the ICC Review 💬
Here's what he had to say 👇 https://t.co/ft3qvn8guQ
— ICC (@ICC) March 1, 2022
Lauding the wicket-keeping skills of Saha, who was excluded from the Indian Test squad for the upcoming series against Sri Lanka, Karthik 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.”
Karthik was sympathetic towards Saha, saying it was not easy for a cricketer to accept rejection.
“I’m pretty sure from wherever I’ve seen with Wriddhiman’s interviews, he understands where this decision is coming from,” the Tamil Nadu cricketer said in the ICC Review.
🗣"I rate him as the best wicketkeeper in the world."
Strong praise from a fellow gloveman in Dinesh Karthik on the latest episode of The ICC Review.https://t.co/uQdY5KsUhY pic.twitter.com/tNjyh5M5WF
— ICC (@ICC) March 2, 2022
“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.
“All of us want to represent the country and that is the burning desire for everybody. So when somebody comes in says, ‘I think your time is done,’ it can be a hard one to swallow. But it is understandable and you have to understand where the selectors, the coach and the captain are coming from,” Karthik said.