Dinesh Karthik reveals why wicketkeepers read wrist spinners better

Former Indian cricketer Dinesh Karthik revealed why wicketkeepers find it easier to face wrist spinners than frontline batters. Karthik himself had a reputation of being a tough batter to bowl to for spinners. Karthik explained how wicketkeeping to wrist spinners builds an intuitive memory regarding the grips employed by those bowlers. He also explained how the sweep shot becomes an effective tool to counter spin. 

“I would say if you read it better, the one shot most keepers play really well is the sweep shot. Sometimes, they don’t have any other shot other than that, but that they do nicely, and hence playing spin comes slightly more easily. Also, you gotta understand when you do keeping, you do so much of it to wrist spinners. Subconsciously, it’s embedded in your mind as to what you want to pick,” shared Karthik in an interaction with Sky Sports.

Flat-batted swing always negates how much spin there is on the pitch: Karthik

The 40-year-old shed light on the importance of core strength and how that jointly helps in both wicketkeeping for longer durations and batting against wrist spinners. 

“We’re slightly ahead of the normal batter in playing wrist spin at times. And the fact that we have a lot of lower body strength, so we stay slightly crouched at our crease, so we pick up cues much better than a lot of others. Flat-batted swing always negates how much spin there is on the pitch. And that is a very useful tool to have when you play some of these wrist spinners,” added Karthik.

All the great wicketkeepers around the world, including the likes of like MS Dhoni, AB de Villiers, Jos Buttler, have dominated spinners and relished the opportunity of taking them on whenever the need arises.

Speaking of Karthik’s latest cricketing assignment, he was a part of Paarl Royals as the first Indian player to ever play in the SA20. Karthik, who had announced his retirement from all forms of international cricket in 2024, struck at 121.49 in the 2025 installment of SA20.