Karthik to walk on Virat Kohli footsteps

Mumbai, March 4 (CRICKETNMORE) - Moments after being appointed captain of Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) for the upcoming Indian Premier League (IPL) season, wicketkeeper-batsman Dinesh Karthik said he would like to emulate current India skipper Virat Kohli and lead from

"In terms of wrist spinners, Piyush (Chawla) has 10 years of experience in playing the IPL and in terms of the number of wickets taken by an IPL bowler, he is in the top five. Kuldeep (Yadav) of late, the performances he is producing for Indian team, so that augurs well for the team. 

"The flavour of the season is wrist spin because it is hard to pick them and they have the ability to pick wickets, it is good that we have those three bowlers. Most teams would be jealous that we have three wrist spinners." 

On having U-19 World Cup winning pacers Kamlesh Nagarkoti and Shivam Mavi, Karthik said his advice to the youngsters would be to focus on variation in a tournament like the IPL and not only pace.

"Definitely not just concentrate on pace, that's just one aspect of fast bowling. At this stage in a situation like IPL you need variations and you need to be thinking ahead of the batsmen. 

"We had Heath Streak as bowling coach and he was very efficient and I know he has the potential to help these youngsters and they have a lot to learn from him as a bowling coach and they are in safe hands, and with somebody like Jacques Kallis, who is an all-rounder, he would be giving the right advice as well."