Senior Indian batter Dinesh Karthik isn’t too big on the Orange Cap award handed out in the IPL. The Orange Cap is for the batsman with most runs in the tournament.
Last year, while speaking on Aakash Chopra’s YouTube channel, Dinesh Karthik pointed out that the Orange Cap only rewards the batter with most runs, which, he added, is mostly amongst the batsmen batting in the top-order. Of all the 14 Orange Cap winners so far, 13 have been openers and once it was a batsman – Kane Williamson in 2018 – at number 3.
? in his veins, ? from the bat.
With a strike rate of 2️⃣1️⃣8️⃣.3️⃣3️⃣ in #IPL2022, @DineshKarthik has been nothing short of brilliant for us this year. ???#PlayBold #WeAreChallengers #IPL2022 #Mission2022 #RCB #ನಮ್ಮRCB pic.twitter.com/NtCN7Niwys
— Royal Challengers Bangalore (@RCBTweets) April 15, 2022
Dinesh Karthik, who is one of the best finishers in the IPL, feels that it is the finishers or the lower-order power-hitters who make more impact to the scoring rate than the top-order batters do, most of whom bat with lower strike rates for longer periods than the finishers who bat with higher strike rate and make large impact even in a short period of time.
“I think the Orange Cap is one of the silliest awards to give away in the IPL. They (the organizers) could think of it in a much better way. Kieron Pollard, Andre Russell would never win the Orange Cap because they would not get the runs a Rohit Sharma or a Quinton de Kock or any other opener gets. What they would do, though, has influenced a lot more matches with their batting than the openers during the course of a season,” Karthik told Chopra on the latter’s YouTube channel last year.
The wicket-keeper feels a bit upset that even after so many years of dissecting T20 cricket, it is the number of runs and not the impact – the strike rate at which those are scored – that matter the most.
“We are still in that number of runs and that kind of thing. But (in T20Is) it comes down to that impact things,” he added.
Karthik understands T20 batting better than many – and he’s showing in IPL 2022 the importance of quick runs. In 5 innings this season, so far, batting for RCB, Karthik has scored 131 runs at a jaw-dropping strike rate of 218 and has been dismissed only once in 5 innings!
If he continued to play in such a fashion, Dinesh Karthik could once again make a comeback in India’s T20 team.
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