The veteran Indian wicket-keeper batsman, Dinesh Karthik stated he was completely surprised when he was asked to bat at No.5 in the 2019 World Cup semi-final against New Zealand. During the chase, after India lost their top-three, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul quite early in the chase, Karthik revealed he was asked to go out ahead of MS Dhoni and that came as a surprise for him.

During a chat on Cricbuzz, Karthik said, “It came as a bit of a surprise because they had made it very clear that I would be batting at number seven. We had to send a rearguard action just to stem the flow of wickets. I was told to pad up and it all happened in a daze, in a hurry. I was just sitting in my shorts and I had to go up, get ready. Literally, I was late to get in, I wasn’t expecting a wicket to fall.”

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Dinesh further added, “KL Rahul got out and I had to put on my pads. I went in in the third over and I don’t know when I got out, and it doesn’t matter, but I just stopped the wickets falling till Boult’s spell was over. He was the main wrecker-in-chief and unluckily when it was time for me to move on, I got out to a brilliant catch by James Neesham.”

After an unusual top-order collapse, India had managed to give some fight to the Kiwis in the semi-final owing to commendable knocks of Ravindra Jadeja and MS Dhoni. From 92/6, the duo took the ‘Men in Blue’ past the 200-run mark.

Just when it seemed India almost pulled out of a win out of nowhere, Jadeja was dismissed by Trent Boult for 77 and Dhoni was run-out in spectacular fashion by Martin Guptill for 50.

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India eventually lost the match by 18 runs crashed out of the tournament while New Zealand progressed into the final where they lost to eventual champions England via controversial boundary count rule.