India's middle-order batter Dinesh Karthik feels a lot has changed in the India dressing room from the time he started his cricketing journey, and that he is really liking the setting with Rohit Sharma at the helm and Rahul Dravid as the chief coach.
In an interaction with teammate Ravichandran Ashwin on BCCI.tv after India's 68-run win against the West Indies in the opening T20I of the five-match series here, the spinner asked DK how different was the current India team set-up compared to when he started off.
Karthik stated that Sharma and Dravid had created an atmosphere where failure was dealt with in the "most rational way possible".
Enjoyable journey
Karthik, who made his India return this year riding on the back of some scintillating performances for RCB in the Indian Premier League 2022 season after being out of national reckoning for more than three years, said, "I think it's a very, very different team (compared to what he had seen in his journey over the years). I must admit I'm really enjoying the set-up.
Calmness in the team
"The kind of calmness that seems to be around this set-up in terms of the coach and captain, I think a lot of credit must go to both of them (Rohit Sharma and Rahul Dravid) because they have set up an atmosphere where they are dealing with failure in the most rational way possible, which I think is a lot of credit to them.
"They are bringing on board people that can help players try and beat themselves at their (game/skills). I think that was something that could have been missing before."
Karthik added that a bad patch or a poor score was something which was being taken very calmly in the current set-up, with no-one being singled out. "At times when I didn't do well, I still felt I was treated the same way. The dressing room atmosphere was pretty calm and it was good. These are the small tick boxes that we need to have at this stage of the game," added Karthik.
