For Kartik, it's country first, cash later

"It’s just become a way of life for me," you can almost see the fatalistic shrug from the bowler. "I really don’t know what went wrong between the time I played Australia and now. I had two very good back-to-back series against Australia and Pakistan."

The amazing thing about Kartik is that he has not really been around long enough to hammer home any advantages. For starters, there was always the situation of Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh coming into the squad, and that too only if both players were in the XI. So Kartik was out in the cold frequently, even after decent performances.

When it came to team selection for the Sri Lanka series, it was Pragyan Ojha who took the third spinner’s slot.

Kartik has a fair selection of admirers, and some of the former players are absolutely fascinated by the bowler. The likes of Nasser Hussain, Michael Holding and Michael Atherton rate the bowler as ‘world-class’. But world-class is not always enough when it comes to selection for the Indian team.

He has however found a larger role to play on the English county circuit, emerging as one of the leading bowlers in the pretty frenetic Twenty20 Championship there, as his side, Middlesex, prepare for the final on July 26. Playing Twenty20, where spinners are often asked, whether they fit in.

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