Cricket Pulse

Dropped catches, missed stumping, shoddy glovework and scores of 9, 0, 7 and 20 - Dinesh Karthik has been an all-round failure in the two Test matches against Sri Lanka. The question isn’t really why has he failed; it really is why he continues to get so many chances.

In the first Test, Karthik dropped two catches. In the second, he missed another catch and muffed a stumping chance. Generally speaking, his collection has been extremely sub-par. His choice of shots too is far from sagacious. In the first Test, he struck a reverse sweep when India was five wickets down and 350 runs behind. The success with that stroke prompted him to play an even more outrageously fatal shot against off spinner Muthiah Muralitharan that commentator Arun Lal described as “ridiculous”.

Why Karthik was preferred to the team’s other wicketkeeper Parthiv Patel in the first place isn’t easy to fathom. In the IPL, the last competitive tournament that the two played together, there was hardly anything to distinguish between the two. In fact, Patel’s record was marginally better in that tournament.

It may also be recalled that Karthik’s recent international record is anything but impressive. Yet nothing seems to be held against the Chennai wicketkeeper. Before being retained for the Test squad to Australia last winter as Dhoni’s back-up, Karthik had scores of 9, 1, 1, 28, 24, 52 in the home series against Pakistan. 115 runs in seven innings for an average of 19.1. In the first two matches he played purely as an opening batsman.

But in the last game against Pakistan, when he also kept wickets, Karthik gave away a record 35 byes. Yet, he was preferred to any other Indian wicketkeeper for the Australia tour.

Even in other versions of the game, his latest record speaks for itself. In his last five ODI innings in October 2007, Karthik made 1, 0, 4, 2 not out and 0 before getting dropped.

It may be recalled that Karthik had also failed in last year’s Twenty20 World Cup. The wicketkeeper-batsman scored 11, 17 and 0 in South Africa before being dropped for the later stages of the tournament. Yet strangely he has remained the preferred second keeper for India to MS Dhoni all along.

And Patel, who has been performing consistently at the domestic and India A level, has been ignored. It is true that Patel, who last played Test cricket for India in October 2004, had a horror series against Australia. He was particularly erratic against leg-spinner Anil Kumble, now captain. But a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then.

Patel scored 615 runs in the Ranji Trophy at an average of 51.25 last season. Playing for India A last September, he also scored 110 off 118 balls against South Africa A in the Test match at Delhi. To prove that he was back to his best in glovework, he took five catches and a stumping against Sri Lanka A in a triangular tournament final in Nairobi last August. A compact batsman with a sound defence with plenty of time to play the ball, Patel seems to have improved both as a keeper and a batsman. He has paid his dues. Now he deserves a second chance.