Dinesh Karthik has always been under the shadow of MS Dhoni. While he has had his fine moments in his career, it has been a case of being in and out of the team regularly. Even as MS Dhoni retired from the longer format, it was Wriddhiman Saha who has been given the bulk of the opportunities. However, in 2018, on the back of a fruitful season for Tamil Nadu, Karthik returned to the Indian red-ball side.
Recalling the anecdote of how his Test career ended, Shastri said, “There’s not much in common between me and Nass, and I’d like to keep it that way. He finished at Lord’s. I finished at Lord’s. The only difference was that he went and knocked on the coach’s doors, saying I think I’m done. In my case, the coach came in and said, ‘Don’t bother coming in the next Test, you are done.”
The conversation on Test careers began as former England skipper Nasser Hussain described how his career came to an end. “I knew I was gone. Strauss (Andrew) came in for that game, and Michael Vaughan was injured. I went to my old coach, Duncan Fletcher, I worked with him for four years. I knocked on his door and said, “Dunc, tomorrow’s gonna be my last day. In the hope that Duncan would say, ‘Nass, you’re playing pretty well’ but he went, ‘No, tomorrow is going to be your last day.’ I said, ‘Thanks, coach,” said Hussain.
“Strauss was getting loads of runs; he was looking like he would get a hundred in both innings. I got him run out. I got one of my best mates at the other end. I hit it through the covers, got a hundred. We beat New Zealand. That’s a decent way to go out. Vaughan came back in. Strauss, we knew, was a superb Test cricket,” Hussain added.
