"It came as a bit of a surprise to me (walking in to bat at five) because they had made it very clear that I would be batting at number seven" - Karthik © Getty

It was a breezy overcast morning at the Old Trafford on the 10th of July. Manchester's unrelenting rains meant that a World Cup semi-final that should've ended a day earlier, was being stretched to day two. In that semi-final, India were finding themselves in an unusual pit. Their top three of KL Rahul, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, who'd thus far notched up 1452 runs among themselves in the tournament, had fallen prey to a spell of new ball menace by Matt Henry and Trent Boult for a grand sum of five runs.

Dinesh Karthik, clearly categorised as a reserve keeper at the start of the World Cup, and a certified T20 finisher over the last two years, was suddenly earmarked as the one to arrest this collapse. Karthik, through the fifteen years of his international career across formats, had batted at every position imaginable, before finally having found his calling as a finisher. He was shaken up again, in a World Cup semi-final of all stages.

"It came as a bit of a surprise to me (walking in to bat at five) because they had made it very clear that I would be batting at number seven," he said in a chat with Harsha Bhogle on Cricbuzz's new segment, In Conversation.

"But they didn't expect something like that to happen because we were going pretty strong in the tournament. Rohit was batting so well, you always have Virat, Shikhar had done well till he left. The middle order typically didn't get enough opportunities to bat, and that is one of the harder ones you know. When the middle order doesn't get to bat and suddenly are pushed into a big game like this and thrust into such a situation.

"There were many games when a lot of the middle order didn't even get to bat. It was a hard thing because someone like Dhoni likes to play an x number of balls in a tournament especially leading up to the semi-final. It could be hard in that tournament. You could have the experience, yes, a player like Dhoni has played 300 games, but a World Cup semi-final is a World Cup semi-final. It has its beauty and the pressure around it. And everybody deep down somewhere felt that this could happen in a game, and it so happened in the semi-final."

The pressure was telling. Karthik was the guinea pig once again of the Indian team management's experiments.

"We had to send a rearguard action just to stem the flow of wickets. I was told to pad up and it all happened in a daze, in a hurry. I was just sitting in my shorts and I had to go up, get ready. Literally, I was late to get in, I wasn't expecting a wicket to fall. KL (Rahul) got out and I had to put on my pads.

"Throughout the tournament it was pretty clear that I was going to bat below Dhoni at number seven. I had done that really well in the past. In Australia we'd finished games, in New Zealand we'd finished games. I had not batted at number five for a couple of years or more. Here I got the opportunity, I went and did the job that was asked of me for the team, which was to arrest wickets."

Arrest wickets he did. He hung around diligently for nearly half an hour with fellow stand-in keeper Rishabh Pant and saw off the initial spell. But that was it. For when Jimmy Neesham plucks out stunners at point off well-timed square drives, you know it's not your day.

"I went in in the third over and I don't know when I got out, and it doesn't matter, but I just stopped the wickets falling till Boult's spell was over. He was the main wrecker-in-chief and unluckily when it was time for me to move on, I got out to a brilliant catch by James Neesham."

India couldn't go past the finishing line either, with an ageing MS Dhoni failing to outrun a direct hit from Martin Guptill, and with Ravindra Jadeja's blitz just not finding enough support. But it was the first spell that'd sealed it for the Kiwis, the one that reduced India to 5 for 3.

"Deep down everybody knew that the only way to beat India was to get those early wickets. The game was a bit of an irritating game for the players, because you win a toss and we wanted to bowl so that we could play in the evenings. Obviously in England it is easier to bowl when the sun is out and it is overcast, so everything of that kind was lost. We had to bowl three overs the next day. It felt like a two-inning game, we had to come and play the next day, with lesser crowd and the whole feel to the game was different going into the second day," Karthik continued.

"But we still had them to a decent score at 240 (211/5) going into that day and they got to 260 (240). 260, let's say, is a good score. If they had put up in a bilateral in England, we would have ended up with 261/2, that's how it would have probably panned out.

But World Cup semi-final has the pressure attached to it and everybody could obviously feel it, sense it. That's the difference between playing a multi-nation tournament and a bilateral. That's where consistency in backing the players, consistency in making them feel part of it and all these small things comes into play."

Ever since winning the 2013 Champions Trophy, India have consistently fallen short in the knockouts since, more so after having done exceedingly well in the league stage until that point and with a clear favourite tag. They lost to Sri Lanka in the finals of the 2014 World T20, to Australia in the 2015 World Cup semi-final, to West Indies in the 2016 T20 World Cup semis, to Pakistan in the 2017 Champions Trophy final and finally to New Zealand in the 2019 World Cup semi-final.

"We've always been good at playing these big tournaments," reckons Karthik. "And in the last few years if semi-finals was the yardstick, we've hit it every time. Just that we have not gone on to go to the final or win the World Cup. I'm sure it's around the corner given the skill we have."