India need new, young finishers like Rahul Tewatia, Shahrukh Khan: Saba Karim

Mumbai, September 21: Former India wicketkeeper and national selector, Saba Karim urged the bigwigs to develop young India talents into finishers so that the team has more options in the future.

Karim was talking about the need to help young cricketers grow in such pressure-handling roles.

“I think the time has come now to develop young cricketers like Rahul Tewatia and Shahrukh Khan because in the IPL most of the teams prefer to have an overseas batsman at that position.

So, you can have David Miller you have Tim David you have Rovman Powell which means that still the young talent who are coming through from the Indian domestic circuit, they’re still not equipped enough to handle the pressure and to deliver on a consistent basis.

Both the names — Shahrukh and Tewatia — they’re young. They do have the skill and they need to be far more consistent. But to do that, we need to put some more hours behind them so that they’re able to come up to that level of international quality,” Karim said Sports18 show Sports Over The Top.

On Ravi Bishnoi playing all three formats: “I would love to see him play in all three formats and somehow for some inexplicable reason, we don’t see any leg spinner in the Test match format these days. But I would like to see the change coming in here and Ravi Bishnoi is one such candidate who can play all three formats and do well for India.

But before that, he needs to play red-ball cricket for his state’s side and if he does well there it’ll add to his confidence and then the Indian selectors can think of playing him in all three formats. The kind of eagerness and ability he has shown, and on top of that, the skill set which he has is really admirable.

Young in age and all that experience really helps in to grow in confidence and he can continue to do that in international level also.”

On BCCI introducing the new 'Impact Player’ rule in domestic cricket: “I feel it’s quite simple. Although the impact player rule being included in the 11. But I think it has more to do with the situation and condition. So, I sincerely feel that will throw up interesting possibilities of which the teams can really do well to take some advantage in a particular game. You’re talking about strategies, you’re talking about tactics, all that will come into play.

“And the fact remains that you can bring a substitute by the end of the 14th over. So, the captain needs to be very flexible, they need some more inputs from the coaching staff. So, all that one can see in the coming domestic tournament.”