NEW DELHI: Former India wicket-keeper batter Dinesh Karthik has offered a masterclass on how to handle the modern generation of wrist spinners — with Afghanistan’s Rashid Khan at the forefront — and explained why wicketkeepers often have an edge in reading them.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!Speaking on Sky Sports, Karthik said wicketkeepers’ familiarity with wrist spin gives them a subconscious advantage. “I would say if you read it better, the one shot most keepers play really well is the sweep shot. Sometimes they don’t have any other shot other than that, but that they do nicely, and hence playing spin comes slightly more easily. Also, you gotta understand when you do keeping, you do so much of it to wrist spinners. Subconsciously, it’s embedded in your mind as to what you want to pick,” Karthik explained.

He also highlighted the physical aspect of keeping: “We’re slightly ahead of the normal batter in playing wrist spin at times. And the fact that we have a lot of lower body strength, so we stay slightly crouched at our crease, so we pick up cues much better than a lot of others.”Taking Rashid Khan as an example, Karthik pointed out an interesting statistic — only one wicketkeeper-batter appears in the list of top five players who have performed well against the Afghan star: “If you see that stat, he’s [Sanju Samson] the only wicketkeeping batsman who’s on that, which tells you that batters have gotten really good as well.”As for a key technical takeaway, Karthik said the slog sweep — played with a flat-batted swing — remains one of the most effective tools. “Flat batted swing always negates how much spin there is on the pitch. And that is a very useful tool to have when you play some of these wrist spinners,” he concluded.