Dinesh Karthik was picked up by Royal Challengers Bangalore in IPL 2022 mega auction, but he had asked Virat Kohli about the same in 2021 itself.
Dinesh Karthik was picked up by Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) at the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022 mega auction for a price of Rs 5.5 crores. While Virat Kohli had earlier announced his decision to step aside as RCB captain, Karthik was one of the players in the running for RCB captaincy.
The franchise recently hosted ‘RCB unbox’ event in Bengaluru where they unveiled Faf du Plessis as their new captain for IPL 2022 campaign, who was in the running alongside Karthik, and Glen Maxwell
While Karthik had already captained Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) for two seasons, Maxwell had donned the captaincy hat for King XI Punjab (now Punjab Kings) in the past.
RCB Director of Cricket Operations, Mike Hesson revealed in a recent interview that they went for Du Plessis, who had never captained an IPL team before because they ‘wanted to grow their leadership group’.
Meanwhile, while Karthik may have joined RCB in 2022, he had already asked Virat Kohli about the same earlier in 2021. The wicket-keeper batsman recalled having a conversation with the former Indian skipper during India’s tour of England in 2021.
In a conversation with Danish Sait, Karthik recalled how he ‘slipped in’ a request to Virat about being considered for RCB, but the 33-year-old replied that he was the ‘wrong person’ to talk to.
“Yeah, I slipped it into him and he said, “you might be talking to the wrong person, bro,” revealed Karthik.
He further went on to add that Du Plessis is an ‘astute leader’ while going on to further laud the former Proteas skipper.
“When he was a leader of South Africa, I’ve seen that he’s tactically very astute. He’s somebody who knows his game very well. In IPL, at the end of the day, you need tactically very good captain. I think he is second-to-none. Leadership is about handling people and everybody will vouch for the fact that he’s a terrific guy,” added the 36-year-old
