Dinesh Karthik picks Virat Kohli at No.5 in his all-time India XI

RCB Batting mentor, Dinesh Karthik, picked up his all-time India XI across all formats on the 78th Indian Independence Day. In a video uploaded by Cricbuzz, Karthik picked cricketers with whom he had played in the Indian threads in his two-decade-long career.

Virat Kohli, Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble were the former RCB teammates he picked while Sachin Tendulkar made the obvious cut alongside Virender Sehwag. In a surprise omission, however, MS Dhoni was left out of DK’s all-time XI for India despite winning three ICC trophies as a captain.

Karthik mentioned that Rohit Sharma and Virender Sehwag will open the batting with Rahul Dravid coming in at No.3. Sachin Tendulkar was slotted in at No.4 with Virat Kohli to follow at No.5.

He had a bit of conundrum to figure out who should be the one at No.6 and eventually after sizeable consideration, he decided to bring in Yuvraj Singh while adding another all-rounder to the squad in the form of Ravindra Jadeja at number seven. Ravichandran Ashwin was in at number eight while Anil Kumble, Jasprit Bumrah and Zaheer Khan were the other remaining picks.

He concluded by saying that there are a few names which he had to omit because not everyone can be fitted due to the sheer enormity of the Indian cricket history over the years. He had a special mention for Harbhajan Singh who was slotted in as the 12th man, while heaping praise on Gautam Gambhir for his significant contributions to Indian cricket.