Karthik, Hardik our enforcers at the death: Dravid

India head coach Rahul Dravid stated that comeback man Dinesh Karthik is “banging the doors down” after his splendid match-winning knock in the fourth T20I against South Africa at Rajkot. He added that Karthik’s performance opens options in terms of his long-term international prospects.

“Karthik was picked for a specific skill — something he has done exceptionally well in the last two-three years. It’s nice that his selection has been vindicated. It came together brilliantly at Rajkot, where we needed that big performance in the last five overs to make a par score. Karthik and Hardik (Pandya) batted wonderfully for us.

“Both Karthik and Hardik are our enforcers at the death. They can capitalise in the last five-six overs as well as anyone in the world. It’s good to see Karthik do well. I was telling the guys that they have to bang the doors open, not just knock. An innings like that (at Rajkot) certainly means that Karthik is banging hard,” Dravid said at a press conference on Sunday.

On Rishabh Pant’s poor form in this bilateral series, Dravid said, “It is hard to judge performances in two-three games when we’re asking our batters to play an attacking brand of cricket in the middle overs. Pant had a good IPL. His average may not have looked good, but his strike rate was very good. We were trying to get these numbers in international cricket as well.

“Pant remains an integral part of our batting line-up, with the power that he has. He’s certainly a big part of our plans going ahead in the next few months,” Dravid said.