Veteran wicketkeeper-batter Dinesh Karthik bid recently announced his retirement from all forms of cricket via social media. He hung up his boots days after turning up for the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 Eliminator. The team lost the game to Rajasthan Royals by 4 wickets but Karthik bowed out with lots of love from the fans and team members.
Karthik had yet another phenomenal season for the RCB, scoring 326 runs in 14 games, including a couple of half-centuries and striking at 187.36. Behind the wicket, he picked up 4 catches and affected a stumping this season. However, his mentor and friend Abhishek Nayar, also the KKR assistant coach, revealed that Karthik was diagnosed with a medical condition called Myocytes.
Speaking with Ranveer Allahbadia on his podcast TRS, Nayar revealed that he found out that Karthik was getting fatigued faster than usual which prompted the cricketer to go for medical tests.
“Dinesh Karthik (DK) had a condition called Myocytes where muscles fatigue no matter what you do. So, you have to make sure that you do certain things and live a certain way, but you have to identify that,” Nayar said in the podcast.
“Sometimes, it’s about doing random blood tests related to a particular issue and understanding what is going wrong in your body, which can prolong your career. This season, I promise you DK has survived due to those reasons,” he added.
Once Karthik got to know about the situation, he had to follow a regime to ensure he could participate in the IPL.
“I remember when we were preparing for the season, he used to bat a lot first and used to get tired in 20-25 minutes. I used to tell him that either you have become old or there is something wrong with your body. Rahul Tripathi was also there and I asked him whether he thinks this is the same old DK and he said no. Then, we did some blood tests and worked on making sure he was strong enough to withstand an IPL. That is how we went through IPL, otherwise, you never know,” he added.
