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Dinesh Karthik, who played his last IPL match earlier this month, gave an interview in which he discussed how his Indian teammates sledged him during his illustrious career in the Indian franchise T20 league. The 38-year-old spoke about how expletives came out of Virat Kohli’s mouth whenever he caught him, while Hardik Pandya ridiculed his game against the leg spinners.
Before taking the retirement from the IPL, Dinesh Karthik had three exceptional seasons with the Royal Challengers Bengaluru, scoring 796 runs in 44 matches at an average of around 34 and a strike-rate in the range of 170. The consistency from DK earned him a spot in the Indian cricket team for their T20 World Cup 2022 campaign in Australia.
During his conversation with Cricbuzz, Dinesh Karthik alluded to the different ways in which his Indian teammates sledged him in the IPL. He was quoted as saying, “Every time I played against RCB and Virat Kohli caught my catch, 'Ben Stokes' came out of his mouth for sure. But that was a send-off.”
“Hardik Pandya sledged me saying 'Abhi legspinner aaya, iska thank you hi hai' [Now a legspinner will come and it is Thank You time] Then I had to play a couple of shots and then he was like 'Theek hai, thoda improve hogaya lag raha hai'. [Looks like he's improved a bit]. That was good. He's a good friend. He was also like 'Commentator banke bhi thoda kaam kar raha hai'. [Even after becoming a commentator, he's working on his game] That was fun,” he added.
Dinesh Karthik also mentioned how Rohit Sharma taunted him during IPL 2024, giving him unnecessary hope of making the trip to the USA and the Caribbean, to play the T20 World Cup later this month.
