The many shades of journeyman Dinesh Karthik

An 18-year-old Dinesh Karthik was asked to carry drinks during a crunch moment of a high-pressure India-Pakistan match. He was almost too eager to help his team and get involved in the game. 

Karthik ran so fast with the drinks that he could not stop and accidentally slipped and fell on the India captain Sourav Ganguly.

"Where do you get these players from, who is he?" an irked Ganguly yelled. 

That incident pretty much sums up Karthik the cricketer. His eagerness to be in action and make an impact in the game is visible. You won't see him standing still while batting, keeping or fielding. 

He is quite fidgety, always moving around while on the ground, be it with the bat or the glove. It's his way of being part of the action. 

The agility of Karthik was on display in his maiden international outing. Karthik acrobatically stumped England's Michael Vaughan in a 2004 ODI at Lord's. 

This still remains one of the most spectacular dismissals in cricket. 

India's 2007 T20 World Cup match against South Africa can serve as the best example of Karthik's versatility as a fielder. 

In the second over of South Africa's innings, Karthik took one of the great catches of all-time off RP Singh to send back Graeme Smith and moments later, MS Dhoni handed the gloves over to him.

In the same match, Karthik made two stumpings with the gloves in hand.

Fast forward 16 years and the man from Tamil Nadu is still making such seamless transitions, keeping in one game and fielding in the other for Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the Indian Premier League (IPL).

Such transitions were evident in his batting as well. There is probably no other batter who has played as many roles as Karthik with the bat.

Karthik has been the understudy to a host of wicketkeepers, mostly Dhoni, throughout his career. He expected Chennai Super Kings to bid for him as he is from that region but they went for Dhoni instead.

So, he had to make his way into the team as a pure batter and for this, he had to be ready to bat anywhere. 

He batted as a pure opener in the 2007 Test tour of England and was his team's leading run-scorer, helping India win a long-awaited series away from home against that opposition. 

But he was discarded after seven more Tests over the course of three years. 

Well, not quite.

By now, Karthik is known as a man of many comebacks and one of them was in 2018 when he returned to the Test side after eight years and 88 Tests. 

Just before the 2012 IPL, he was faced with a huge personal setback. His then-wife betrayed him for his India and Tamil Nadu teammate Murali Vijay. He was preparing for a Vijay Hazare Trophy match against Karnataka when he got to know about that.

It was a devastating moment but Karthik decided the show must go on and slammed a superb hundred to lead Tamil Nadu to victory. He was not going down without a fight. 

At that time, he was not part of the ODI set-up but a year later, he was back with a bang and made two centuries in the Champions Trophy 2013 warm-ups. 

But it's the inconsistency that let Karthik down many times. 

He did manage to make another ODI comeback in 2017, playing 23 more ODIs in two years before playing his last in the 2019 World Cup.

In those 23 ODIs, Karthik batted at every position from number three to seven and probably the lack of a fixed position hurt his career.

Finally, quite late in his career, he found a role that he embraced like no other. It was different from his previous T20 roles and undoubtedly the most difficult one.

In 2013, he was Mumbai Indian's designated number three in the IPL and was instrumental in their triumphant campaign with 510 runs in the tournament. 

He played at least 20 innings in the IPL in every position from three to seven but it's the role at number six and seven, as a finisher, that really shaped Karthik's late resurgence. 

He was a bit frustrated when captain Rohit Sharma held him back for the death overs in the 2018 Nidahas Trophy final against Bangladesh. 

What followed was history as Karthik blasted 29* off eight to script an epic win and the video of his onslaught is one of the most viewed cricket videos out there.

In the same year, he had one of his best IPLs for Kolkata Knight Riders, both as a captain and as a batter. He smashed 498 runs striking at 147.8 and led Kolkata to the knockout stage.

But he will probably be best remembered for his stint with Bengaluru, where he played a role similar to the one in the Nidahas final.

Batting mostly at the lower middle order, Karthik scored 937 runs across three seasons for them with a superb strike rate of 162.96. The 2022 IPL (330 runs, strike rate of 183.33) helped him make the last of his many international comebacks.

The 2024 season, his last in the IPL, was one of his finest seasons with 326 runs at a whooping strike rate of 187.36 and his cameos towards the back end helped his team reach the knockout stage which seemed unlikely at one stage.

Karthik was an unlikely entrant in the race of T20 World Cup selections despite being close to 39 because of his unique skillset. It did not quite materialise for him but a comeback was really on the cards.

He is an astute observer of the game which was evident when he was the captain of Kolkata and also nowadays when he is on air, doing commentary. Also, his surgeon-like precision when he played those reverse laps in the IPL tells a lot about his cricketing intelligence. 

A proper Test opener at one stage of his career, Karthik went from scoring an 18-ball duck in an ODI to becoming one of T20 cricket's best finishers. 

His career has seen many colours, many ebbs and flows. He played both the roles of an opener and a tailender. He brings a lot of colour when he commentates as well on TV and is called the "Giorgio Armani of TV commentary" by fellow Sky Sports broadcasters. 

Karthik has said goodbye to the IPL as one of the league's most decorated players. It might just be the end of his professional cricket career as well. He never quite managed to step out of the talismanic Dhoni's shadows but his career, despite the below-par numbers, will be remembered for his comebacks and never-say-die attitude.