The DK Project: Building a modern-day T20 hyperspecialist

It's 2022. Dinesh Karthik is 37. It's a day out from India's first official T20 World Cup warm-up. He walks into the nets at the Gabba in Brisbane and to the second ball he faces, he shuffles across, squats and then sets up to reverse-lap the ball over the imaginary wicket-keeper. He bats for 20 minutes in a session of ferrety movements, improvisations and premeditations. At the end of it, he has a word with the batting coach and then pauses to get a drink...

It's more than four years since Karthik played the last of his 26 Test matches; more than three since his ODI career stalled with India being knocked out of the World Cup. In 2021, at the age of 36, Karthik joined Sky Sports' commentary panel for the English summer, and most observers assumed his transition from international cricketer to media pundit was complete.

But behind the snazzy suits, the tinted glasses and his commentary quips, Karthik was still chipping away, going from one remote ground to another with former cricketer and long-time coach and confidant Abhishek Nayar in tow, hiring entire stadia and a support crew of cricketing extras with one intention: to mould Karthik into a T20 hyperspecialist finisher.

Ahead of the T20 World Cup, which Karthik first played at the age of 22, the pair open up to Cricbuzz about their carefully curated and rather expensive regimen, why the big investment was necessary to tackle the demands of the rapidly evolving format, and offer a new taste of where this most restless and unruly form of the game may be heading.

Excerpts...

The DY Patil Stadium in Mumbai was specially booked for Dinesh Karthik - Abhishek Nayar and a lot of budding academy cricketers for a specific training session in early 2021. We understand that it was not a one-off...

Dinesh Karthik: I think I've been doing this in Mumbai with Abhishek Nayar for some time now (laughs). But we've gone all over the country to practice. A lot of people have been kind enough and given us grounds, the bowlers and all of that. He [Abhishek] has a set up with bowlers... you know an academy. So I've been booking open grounds and practicing for four-five years now. DY Patil has been very kind to me and I practiced quite a bit there. Khar Gymkhana again... Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai... I'm sure I'm forgetting some...

Abhishek Nayar: I think in Mumbai, we practice literally everywhere from the maidans, to Bombay Gymkhana, to CCI, There's the Dadoji Kondadev Stadium in Thane, that's where we practice a lot. We've gone to Talegaon (between Mumbai and Pune), where there is another DY Patil Stadium... Pune. Dehradun, Jaipur, Surat, Chennai, Bangalore.

I like to go to different places and practice on different soils, different bowlers, different conditions. I just feel it's more challenging and I think it comes more from where he is going to be playing the next tournament and we try and go to similar conditions and even if it's not similar conditions, it should be as close as it can be to what he is likely to face. So we've gone to Anand (in central Gujarat), which is very remote, I mean, not many people end up going there, but we've gone there to practice as well.

How do you shortlist where you want to do a particular session?

DK: Obviously, the first option is to try and get a ground which has a good wicket. Then sometimes you don't get a good wicket. But if the size of the ground is slightly big, I enjoy it a lot more, because if I learn to hit on bigger grounds, you know, that feeling that you get is very good because when you go on to slightly smaller grounds [for the actual match], you already feel a lot more confident.

AN: Say for the IPL, it was in Mumbai last year, we were already in Mumbai. So we didn't need to go anywhere, maximum if we wanted to change, we would go to Surat. Because it also has red soil and is similar [to Mumbai], but it's still a change of place and conditions, so just mentally you feel better. But yeah, I think it should be close to what we're doing and when we're doing it and then I circle around it. Before he went to Abu Dhabi [for the IPL], we went to Jaipur, because we wanted to practice on black soil and the conditions are going to be similar there and what will suit us. I try to make a call there.

I think with Australia [for the World Cup], we haven't obviously got the time because he's been playing for India. But just prior to this tournament [Australia T20Is] we went to Delhi to practice on some black soil, skiddy surfaces. It's obvious they won't have the same bounce, but what you can do is you can simulate the bounce. So we use synthetic balls to address the bounce. And because it's black soil, and it's skiddy, it kind of helps your bat speed. So you kind of have to tweak it and cheat it a bit to simulate it.

Is it easy to book entire grounds?

AN:It's never easy. That's the headache I have everyday, when he's around (laughs). But you gotta do what you gotta do, It's never fun, I can promise you that.

Dial back a bit to the start. Was the decision to mould Karthik completely as a finisher a conscious decision or circumstance driven?

DK: It was only around 2018-19 that I made a conscious effort to bat slightly lower down the order for KKR, and the team combination kind of dictated that up to a point. Because we had the openers, [Chris] Lynn and [Sunil] Narine, then you had [Robin] Uthappa and Nitish Rana. Obviously the top four were comfortable with where they were batting, then it had to be me and [Andre] Russell at 5 and 6 depending on the match situation. And it got to a point where, you know, at the end of 8-9 overs, I used to go irrespective and after 14 overs it used to be Russell, that's how it was timed. And then organically it started to change depending on form, situation and all of that. Obviously Robin went out of the team and then the dynamics of the team became different. And then you know, we bought in [Eoin] Morgan so we evolved. But I could see I was batting largely at 5-6 and I was hardly batting at even 4 in my time at KKR. And I realized, with me playing finisher, the pressure of the game was different.

In 2018, when I came back into the Indian team in the T20 setup, I did that role for India with a decent amount of success. I was very happy doing it. I wanted to do the same in the IPL and for India and I went about deciding to practice very specifically, knowing that I can fulfil this role, whichever team I play for. Even when I went back to my state team I batted a lot at 4 and 5 and allowed the boys to obviously go and play up top, which is what a lot of the batsmen enjoy doing. And then you know, I had the experience to absorb the pressure and then dictate how the match needed to go depending on where it was. I made a conscious effort to do that.

AN: I mean, the day we kind of decided that he didn't want to play red-ball cricket... when he had clarity that he didn't want to play red-ball cricket anymore and he wanted to start focusing on white ball, I think that's when the thought process of doing something which is niche (started)... doing something that, in general, wasn't really considered much in terms of how someone looked at a finisher's role as a specialized job. I think we just felt about doing something that not a lot of people are doing... And there was an obvious gap in Indian cricket post Mahendra Singh Dhoni you know... Hardik [Pandya], with his fitness and stuff. You obviously analyze and understand what are the areas or what are the positions in the team that can provide you with an opportunity to get back and I felt the only place that he could prove his worth and and be special about was that, you know, the last 5-6 overs, because even last year, Hardik was evolving into this proper middle-order batter.

So, that was more of the mindset and I thought there was this journey we could take and make that slot our own in terms of how we want to go about playing in those situations and him having the kind of experience he has, preparing specifically for those kinds of situations. So I think that was the inception of the idea and inception of what we thought we can do and work towards doing something that not a lot of people are doing currently in Indian or world cricket.

What was the first thing needed to set this journey up?

DK: I personally feel, today's T20 cricketer is a bit like a tennis player. I think it's important to have a team around you, so you know I had Abhishek right at the top. I got in a technical coach Apurva Desai (former cricketer, faculty at NCA). I did some power-hitting practice with RX Murali this time before the IPL. I kind of branched out into various things... I have a trainer, I have a psychologist. So, it's a team but they all don't have to travel with me everywhere. When they are needed, I'll call the person to clarify what I need. Because if you want to constantly up your game with the amount of technology available, where people are constantly observing you and assessing you, I think you need to be one up and try to do everything possible to be the best player that you can be.

AN: So I think when I first started working with him, I was still playing, still part of the setup. I wouldn't say I understood the technicalities of batting at that time. Understanding the tactical part was my biggest strength. So I think my biggest teacher at that point was Apurva Desai, who I got on board for DK at that point, that was almost six-seven years ago.

Can you talk us through what these technical fixes were and how you'd go about them?

DK: See, there are some basics to my batting. And if I feel they are not in place, obviously I'll get on the phone with Apurva and then I'll get Apurva to run it past Abhishek so that that can be practiced. But at the end of the day, at the head of it all is Abhishek and you know, he really understands my game the best and my personality the best and we figure out what's best for me and how we can incorporate what I'm learning with other coaches. And they stay in touch with him and if there's anything to be done, they run it by him, so if anything's to be worked on, there is no confusion and more communication and clarity.

AN: The technique was always about getting the timing of his bat 'tap' right. There was this tendency of his head falling over and it was all based on his bat tap. The bat tap and his bottom hand. Those were two things that were big learnings for me at that point to understand that they affected a lot of his power and direction of his shots in his batting. So, I think that's where Apu played a key role in first getting his setup right at that point. You see what his batting has evolved into now: he's not tapping the bat against fast bowlers. When you go and see his older videos where he had a tap just prior to release from the faster bowlers, so I think that is something that we developed and we worked on when he was going to Australia, New Zealand because we wanted to buy him a fraction more time. It was a big change for him because all his life he had done this and then kudos to him to kind of believe in us and actually achieve that. From then to now, from just the technicality part of it, I think more often than not, we now kind of figure it out on our own and, and now I feel it's more about just fine tuning rather than making big changes.

Let's come back to these sessions. So you are at a particular venue, you fly in the bowlers and if needed, other coaches... What happens next, the length of each session must vary?

DK: So Abhishek curates the program. He'll have a session where I'll play only wrist spin, another session where I've only played fast bowlers. Then there are certain sessions where I'm only trying to hit a certain area. I've trained in all kinds of sessions... I've had 2-day sessions, 3-day sessions. Sometimes I've even stayed at the place continuously for two months. So that depends on the time I have [before the next series] and how many matches I play and what I'm trying to achieve, what is the tournament that I'm looking forward to and what am I preparing for.

AN:Every day was different. I'm not someone who plans for the week, I plan for the day based on how DK's body is moving and how he's feeling on that particular day. So there are days when he'd play left-arm spin really well so I stop that and challenge him with what I feel on that day is not working. Okay, so for me, I think in terms of my approach towards every session, it is quite open. If I feel a certain gap, I will start with that but then I'll always manoeuvre if I feel that he's achieving those targets on that particular day fairly easily. Say in particular conditions, the ball is turning and that is where he's struggling, so on that particular day, I'll try and address only that aspect.

For example, one aspect was when the pitch was slightly slow and he had to generate force by himself, that was something that wasn't his strongest forte. And a lot of times playing legspin, he would have a lot of insecurities with it. So a lot of times I think you try and simulate those kinds of conditions. And then you try and come up with different solutions and experiment with it and see which one works and which one doesn't, and as and when he keeps doing that he starts to believe more than anything else that 'in these situations and in these conditions, these are my options. And this is what I can resort to.' But I think it's more about addressing every situation and it's more like a risk and reward analysis. So he's playing in India, matches are happening, for instance in Mumbai... what are the conditions and through the season how the conditions will change. (Same) if he's playing at DY Patil, or Wankhede, at the CCI, or Pune. When the season starts, what are the conditions likely to be at the start of the season? What about at the end? Who are the bowlers and what are the teams that are going to challenge him at the death? What are his options if he's started the tournament and he's not in form, how does he go through making sure he can at least have a few impact innings. In cases he hits form, how does he make sure that the consistency through that tournament stays?

So you kind of plan for most contingencies in terms of success and failure. And then obviously as a cricketer, once you've done that you walk into a tournament understanding that if things are going wrong, at least you are aware of what you can do to reduce the damage. If things are going well, you know exactly how to sustain it. So the level of awareness is higher.

How specific do these scenarios get?

DK:When you have an open ground and you have people to help you with the right kind of bowlers and fielders, then you try and set up the field that is most difficult for you and try and achieve what you would do in a game. And then you put yourself under pressure with the other factors, say: 5 overs, 52 runs; or 6 overs, 64 runs. And you go about trying to achieve them.

I'll never walk into a session and bat time. It's always been very specific in the sense that I'm going to play five overs and generally I'm paired up with somebody else and you know, obviously we're hitting the ball but we're not running at full tilt because I'm gonna have long days of practice so I don't want to lose all my energy running, but there'll be a turnover of strike and at times the runner might eat up two-three balls extra and that way the pressure increases. So obviously that too was making it as match-like as possible. And that way the other person also is improving and evolving as a batsman and it helps me also, dealing with the situation for there will be days when my partner is not feeling it. Then I have to take spot calls, this is the bowler who is bowling well on this kind of pitch, so I have to take down the other one.

AN: For me, it's about understanding...where you stand with the bowler and I kind of try to beat him [DK] in his mindset. I know what DK is going to do, so I would ask the bowler to do something else. What can he do then? If there's a ground where a certain side is big and people are targeting him on that side, what are his options? So once we keep doing that over and over again and you keep coming up with options, I think over a period of time we started realizing that you start competing, you literally start becoming a 360 player because you've practiced enough options and you've got all your shots and the confidence of playing those under pressure. So I think these simulations, particularly working with the bowlers and trying to execute certain skills versus him is where you kind of train his mind and his skill together to be ready in those situations, wherein then he can be very instinctive. Even if he premeditates, his training will give him the opportunity to be instinctive if the bowler does something different from what he has planned.

Let's run through death-overs scenarios: A fast bowler forces Karthik to hit to the longer boundary under pressure. How do you go about preparing for this?

AN:A lot of time there was this belief in DK's mind that if it's a bigger boundary and all four fielders are on the on-side, then he will start going on the off-side. So a lot of times he looked to play the field rather than the bowler. I think what we tried to work out and what I always believe in: you always play the bowler and not the field in those death overs, because certain bowlers create certain angles in their action and certain angles in the kind of deliveries they have. So sometimes even though they've set a certain field in the deep on one side, it's easier to beat that field, rather than beating a man that is up in the circle. So what we kind of started to do was analyze and understand people's actions and then based on their actions, what are the areas that you can actually target him with. Even though there's a fielder, there's still a higher percentage of him succeeding in those areas than going into another area.

Once we've targeted that, and once you've got [won] the bowler on his strength, then you can exploit his weakness, then it just becomes easy because he moves away from it [his strength]. So that is something that I think we started working towards, because a lot of times what we saw with DK was if there's a bigger boundary or if there were four fielders out, he wouldn't target those areas. And it was very predictable for the opposition because they knew he's gonna go and try something else. Then we just started to try and make sure that we kept hitting those areas and kept perfecting that art of, if not hitting sixes, but hitting those boundaries, and then alternating it whenever the ball was in the slot to be able to hit that six but have the freedom to then put the bad ball away to the other side.

Maybe a couple of years earlier, as a finisher, he could have avoided facing spin at all. But not anymore... Teams are even holding back legspinners for players like DK who could be susceptible to it...

AN: Yes, I don't want to give away much but there's been a lot of practice that's gone around him playing the googly, because there was this whole thing about legspinners getting him out with the googly. What I used to do is to cover his vision and ask him to play spin. So the only time he saw the ball was when the ball actually was very close to him. Growing up DK was someone who played spin so well. So the biggest strength was he picked up the googly very quickly. And what had started to happen was he was finding it difficult to pick this new googly that the legspinners used to bowl which looked more like a top spinner, but was a googly. There was this new release that Chahal and everyone came up with. And I think what happened was it became very difficult for him to identify whether it's a legspinner or a googly and it was not so much about technique, but more just the mindset of picking it up.

We tried to make him watch videos and tried making sure that he kept watching and identifying the balls but in real time, sometimes he still didn't pick [the googly]. So I think what we kind of thought was to get prepared to change that, get him to learn to play off the pitch rather than off the hand. 'We are not going to figure what's happening off the hand, but off the pitch'. And so we started to train for that. So it kind of worked for him, he started playing the ball a lot later and started looking to play on the back foot a lot more than the front foot in general.

Wouldn't that put him at a disadvantage against the quick wrist spinners like Rashid or Zampa?

AN: Yes we work towards that. That is why we did those drills where he actually couldn't see the release of the bowler and he could only see the ball once it was like six meters away from him. So we used to block his vision for that long and then after that, he would just get a fraction of a second to react right. So what it did was allow his reaction time and his instincts to take over. So he stopped worrying about what was going to be delivered, and started reacting to what was delivered. And that, over a period of time of practicing again and again, kind of gave him the confidence that even if he didn't pick it, he at least had enough time to go past that period and not typically just get out. So we were just tricking the mind and changing the approach rather than anything else, of course with some tactical adjustments also.

How important is being a power-hitter and a 360-degree hitter for any batter in the modern T20, let alone a finisher? Can it be learnt or do you need those skills in your basic batting DNA?

DK: You can cultivate anything you want to do. You just need to put your heart and mind into it. Yes, you might be scared to practice a certain shot, but you need to cross that line of fear if you want to try and achieve something special.

With regards to being a 360-degree batter, it definitely increases your chance of scoring against various bowlers because they are also clever, they try and execute to people who don't have shots behind the wicket. So you can obviously find a way to get those balls away, which are obviously good balls for the bowlers, and then you know you can put them under pressure.

AN:Honestly, I've always told him this and I stand by it. I don't think there's been a big change in his power hitting. And that is not his biggest strength. I mean, if you go back and see it's interesting if you actually look at his stats and you realize that most power hitters actually hit a lot more straight sixes but he hits a lot more sixes square of the wicket. So he's actually someone who tends to pick up the ball early and use space and use angles and play, and that's what makes him effective. So he's actually not a power hitter, but he's a very smart touch player who knows exactly how to, you know, hit the gaps and then be effective and hit sixes. So he's more of a boundary player who knows how to hit sixes when the time is right and when it's required. So I think the power hitting part of it, I don't really put him in that Dre Russ category, the Glenn Maxwell category or even the [Liam] Livingstone category. I think he has kind of created a category of his own in terms of how he can hit those gaps in uncanny areas of the ground and then obviously be effective enough to to hit a 70 or 80-yard boundary. He's not someone who hits a 95-100 yard boundary. When you associate power hitting it's about how far you can hit the ball, he is not so much about those big sixes.

I think his effectiveness has come from his understanding of the game and understanding of his batting technique. Once you understand your limitations it becomes easier to achieve consistency, because you're constantly not trying to overpower or do something that you know you're not used to doing. But I do believe that his level of awareness and his level of understanding the opposition and what a bowler is going to do to him through all this has evolved a lot. The sort of calmness at the death that you talk about with DK does not come from knowing he can power-hit but it comes from understanding and having clarity of what can be delivered against him. And also understanding that if none of his options work and he fails, it's fine. Because that is something that was his downfall growing up as a cricketer because he couldn't accept failure and he felt every time he failed, he went back and changed something about himself. Now it does not happen because his level of awareness is far higher than what it was.

You can simulate most things to the finest detail, but how do you simulate the quality of the opposition and the pressure of a real game...

DK:Yes absolutely. You cannot achieve two things perfectly: the skillset of the bowlers you'll face in the game, that is a little hard to replicate, and the pressure you will face in the game. Those are the two hardest things to replicate, everything else to a point can be replicated. As you practice, you get a ballpark idea as to what you're practicing and how much of that you're able to incorporate into your matches. So that comes with a little bit of prior experience as well. And then you're able to simulate them both and realise, 'Okay, this is what I'm doing in practice, so this is how much we need to do in the game.' So that comes with a lot of practice.

AN: Yes, but he's also very lucky because we have a setup here with almost 60-70 bowlers. So we have an array of different bowlers with different range of actions and quality and stuff. So we've been blessed with that. To give him different challenges, left-arm pace, slingy, spin, you name it.

Also with recreating pressure, it's easy for me with DK, to just scare him. I mean, I think over a period of time in a relationship, you understand what makes him tick, you understand his deepest and darkest insecurities. So even just at that point, you just need to tap into his insecurities to make sure that his level of awareness is high. Because normally pressure happens when you are insecure or unsure about what's going to happen. It's very tough to kind of simulate pressure, right? But what you can do is you can sometimes just talk about certain situations and you put that person into that situation. And he starts to imagine him playing for a certain team, a certain bowler and failing and not doing well. And at that point, that insecurity automatically starts to bring a different aspect in your practice, because you start training harder to never face that emotion or that mindset.

Can this hyper-specialised way be the future of T20 training? Because it certainly seems like it requires a great deal of investment in time and finances?

DK: Look, I think for a start, I don't think there's one perfect way to practice. I think everybody has their own methodologies and this is one way of doing it, which I'm doing. I think it will also constantly keep evolving with how everything has evolved over a period of time in this sport, especially in the T20 format, where things have evolved at a rapid pace. So it'll be very interesting to see how more unique methods can be brought to the table. But I feel it is a very good way to practice. On a personal front... is it advisable for everybody? Maybe not because obviously you need to have to bear the expenses over a period of time consistently and that can be really hard. So you need to make certain sacrifices. Obviously getting grounds and players is not easy. Then I'm missing the main expense. The Kookaburra balls are very expensive to buy. It's an expensive process, but, you know, I've always believed that only if you invest in your own game can you get better at it, so that's always how I've looked at it. I've been lucky that my family has also encouraged me to do that. And I guess it also brings the people who work with you a certain sense of accountability and responsibility in trying to help me elevate to become the best cricketer that I could be.

AN:I don't know any cricketer who will fly 10-12 bowlers down, look after their hotel, food, lodging, allowances. I don't know a lot of people who do that. The issue that you sometimes face with this is obviously logistics and getting these kinds of people, getting so many people to help you. I think the other thing that he benefited a lot was KKR, because through their academy setup, a lot of that expenditure was taken up by KKR. That way Venky [Mysore] sir has always been very supportive in terms of giving him what he needs. Even for that matter, allowing me to work with him after he was bought by RCB was something that KKR did. But even individually he's always been someone who will, if I tell him there is a certain bowler we need to fly down or travel with, he'll invest in his sport. He'll never hesitate to spend money or think about getting it free or organising it. I think that is something that is very unique with him.

The grounds, the white Kookaburra balls for these sessions. I mean everything is an investment and it's almost like you go buy clothes and shoes that you like to wear to look good, right? You spend that kind of money on equipment which will make you look good in life and provide for you, so I think that's the mindset that we decided when we started working, we decided that we won't cut corners when it comes to cricket. We can cut corners when it comes to lifestyle and what you wear and what you eat. And what you drink. But the way you play there will be no compromise.

I feel a lot of cricketers on their own find ways to do things like that. And some people are gifted, some people are talented, someone like DK who has talent but needs his mind to be conditioned in a certain way. So it requires all of this. And then there are people that you'll develop through this who are not very talented, but through a certain process and planning and repetitions over a period of time, can be developed. I feel that's the way forward for sure.