Ricky Ponting gives verdict on whether Dinesh Karthik should make India’s T20 World Cup squad

Dinesh Karthik’s sensational return to the Indian team has been a huge talking point since the squad announcement by the BCCI for the five-match T20I series against South Africa.

At the age of 37, Karthik has shown incredible finishing skill in T20 cricket in the recently-concluded IPL 2022 following which he was rewarded with a India call-up. But the question remains, will he be part of the 2022 T20 World Cup team? And former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting gives his verdict.

Karthik scored 330 runs in IPL 2022 for Royal Challengers Bangalore at a strike-rate of more than 183. His sensational batting that helped RCB reach the playoffs for a consecutive season, raised calls for him to be part of the World Cup squad.

Speaking to former cricketer Isa Guha in The ICC Review, Ponting has absolutely backed the notion and admitted that he would rather be surprised if India snubs the veteran wicketkeeper-batter for the big event in October.

“I would have him, and I’d have him in at that five or six role,” he said. “The way that he finished games for RCB this year, he took his game to another level.

“When you look at the IPL, you want your better players to maybe be able to win two or three, maybe four games through the season. If you can get that out of them, it’s probably going to be a really good return. But Dinesh probably had a bigger impact on a lot of the games than most of the other RCB players did this year.

“Virat (Kohli) having the year he’s had, Maxi (Glenn Maxwell) started the tournament really well … but DK was the one. And Faf too I guess, who kept the RCB bandwagon rolling. I’d be surprised if he’s not in there (India) line-up somewhere.”

India still have two more T20I series to play – one in Ireland and other in England – before they leave for Australia for the T20 World Cup.