CricDigs Blogs

Those who had been reading the blogs here would remember that sometime back I had proposed the option of having Dinesh Karthick as the specialist keeper in the Indian team and making Dhoni a regular batsman at number four. Further, this would have provided Dhoni the chance of rolling over his arm, when needed and augment his career in terms of reducing his workload. Now, another good prospect has emerged in the form of Uthappa who is now keeping wickets for the Royal challengers Bangalore in IPL2.

What makes this more interesting is the fact that Uthappa could offer more to the team in terms of being an attacking number three batsman for the ODIs. Further, I would now like to propose a different way of combining Uthappa and Dhoni — the two keepers in the team.

For starters, I really don’t know if there are any rules against keepers being allowed to swap positions unless they are injured in a game. If there aren’t any, then an interesting solution could be tried out. Why can’t Dhoni keep wickets for the first 10 and then the last 10 overs of the game? This means that Uthappa would be needed to keep for the in-between 30 overs. This would help the team more since it will take time for Robin to graduate to the level of being a full-time keeper. Further, Dhoni would still be able to maintain his leadership from behind the stumps by being directly able to communicate with the bowlers about the line to bowl.

As far as the choice between Karthick and Uthappa goes — I realize that Karthick may have the better backlift of the bat and looks more organized but Uthappa could be groomed to take over the spot of a regular ODI number three batsman, since Tendu’s presence wouldn’t last for a very substantial period of time. Uthappa is more suited for coming in and scoring at a brisk rate if Sehewag or Gambhir get out early, without compromising on the run-rate factor.