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Royal Challengers Bengaluru wicketkeeping batter Dinesh Karthik spoke about the franchise’s fandom. Karthik appeared on Ravichandran Ashwin’s YouTube show ‘Kutti Stories’ where he opened up on the various aspects of his career. Not only this, but he also spoke about RCB’s fandom, and tagged the franchise’s fans as ‘family’. Karthik is currently a part of the franchise in the ongoing season of the tournament and has played some decent knocks for the team in recent matches.
On the show, Ashwin asked Karthik about the RCB fandom, to which the cricketer said, “RCB fans are loyalists. They are actually family, and I say that in good and bad ways. The good way is that when you go, no matter what happens, if I walk in, they will cheer my name and make me feel like I'm the greatest player on Earth.” He added, “What I mean by that is that to the outside world, they will never give up on you. If there is a fight between say you know some team and they say, “Oh, X is not a good player,” they will pounce on that person.”
Highlighting the negative side of it, Karthik said, “On a personal level, that same fan will abuse me silently in DMs every day, rather than on a one-on-one note. He will go hard at me if I don't do well for RCB; he will smash me, not just me, my family, and whoever is possible in my life. But to the outside world, They will not give up an RCB player. For them, it is very special, and what a fan base they have for a team that has been competing for 16 years! unreal fan base that they have, as I said. I've been part of many teams. You know all of them have fans, but RCB is incredible.”
I have two regrets in my cricketing career: Dinesh Karthik
The 38-year-old also revealed the two biggest regrets he has in his life. Karthik said that while he doesn’t have any regrets in his personal life, he has two in his cricketing career. The 38-year-old said, “I don't have too many regrets in life. I'm not that kind of a person, but if I have two regrets in my cricketing career, one would be the fact that I chose not to get retained because I thought MI was a team that could have really helped me grow and become an even better player.”
Karthik continued, “And two would be the fact that, obviously, I couldn't represent CSK so far. but that I understand. Though it's a regret because I couldn't play. I mean, coming from Chennai, I played all my cricket there, and I would have loved to be part of the yellow jersey, but it is only the, but I always respect them because they genuinely try every year to try and get me in the auction.”
He further said, “And you know, that's all they can; they were bidding the last time as well. They were bidding, and that's all you can expect, so you know these are my only two regrets.”