Former Australia player Ricky Ponting is impressed with veteran India player Dinesh Karthik’s finishing skills and believes that the veteran keeper-batter can play the role of a finisher quite well for the Indian team in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia. However, Karthik has returned to the Indian team at the age of 37 on the back of a stunning IPL outing as a finisher for Royal Challengers Bangalore.

Karthik was phenomenal for RCB this season, scoring 330 runs at a strike rate of more than 183 as well. Ponting said that he would like to see Karthik batting at no.5 or no.6 for India in the mega event and would be surprised if the veteran keeper misses out again.

ALSO READ: “I’ve always enjoyed his company no matter what” – Hardik Pandya on Ashish Nehra

“I would have him, and I’d have him in at that five or six role,” Ponting told Isa Guha in The ICC Review. “The way that he finished games for RCB this year, he took his game to another level. When you look at the IPL, you want your better players to maybe be able to win two or three, maybe four games through the season. If you can get that out of them, it’s probably going to be a really good return. But Dinesh probably had a bigger impact on a lot of the games than most of the other RCB players did this year.”

ALSO READ: Gary Kirsten applauds Hardik Pandya, calls him ‘Incredibly humble’

“Virat (Kohli) having the year he’s had, Maxi (Glenn Maxwell) started the tournament really well but DK was the one. And Faf too I guess, who kept the RCB bandwagon rolling. I’d be surprised if he’s not in there (India) line-up somewhere,” Ponting further added about Dinesh Karthik.