Dinesh Karthik has opened a “lot more options” for Team India ahead of the T20 World Cup in Australia. Head coach Rahul Dravid said in Bangalore on Sunday that the wicketkeeper-batter has provided the selectors a sense of “vindication” for bringing him into the national side for the five T20Is versus South Africa.

Karthik excelled in the finisher’s role for Royal Challengers Bangalore in IPL 2022 smashing 330 runs at a strike-rate of 183.3, of which 251 runs came in overs 16 to 20 at a strike-rate of 207.4. He continued his good form in the T20I series and in the fourth T20I in Rajkot, smashed 55 off 27 balls, the sort of knock which Dravid said, “certainly makes you start”.

Karthik and Hardik Pandya, who hit 46 off 31 deliveries, had added 65 off 33 balls to lift India to 169, which proved to be a winning total. Karthik walked out to bat with the team struggling on 81 for 4 in the 13th over, and the series on the line.

“He was picked for a very specific skill,” Dravid said of the 37-year-old Karthik. “And it’s nice when that’s kind of indicated in a sense that it came together brilliantly for us in the Rajkot game, where we needed that big performance in the last five overs to be able to make a par score.

He and Hardik are our enforcers at the end, guys who can capitalise on those last five-six overs.

“They are probably two of the best in the world in those last five-six overs. So, yeah, it was really nice to see Karthik come off and do what he has been picked to do. It certainly opens up a lot more options for us going forward. Innings like that certainly make you start. Like I was telling the guys it’s not about knocking the door — you have to start banging the door down, and an innings like that certainly means he is knocking very hard.”

India have a lot of T20 cricket to play between now and the World Cup in October-November, but as the management zeroes in on the squad, Karthik may have just put his best foot forward on the road to the showpiece event. Dravid doesn’t want to put a timeline but by the end of the England T20Is, he wants to have a fair idea about the 18 to 20-odd players he would be looking at for Australia.

“As you come closer and closer to the event, you want to firm up your final squad or if not, obviously you want to have some contingencies in the kind of world we live in today. Obviously you want to take only 15 to the World Cup but (need to identify) top 18 to 20 players,” he said.

“Obviously, there could be odd changes due to injury and things that are beyond your control but we are going to start looking to firm up that squad as quickly as possible. Whether that will happen in the next series (Ireland) or the series after that (England) is hard to tell but we are certainly looking to do that as quickly as possible,” he remarked.