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Dinesh Karthik picks his top 5 players to watch out for in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2023

The first Test between India and Australia will be played on 9th February.

Indian cricketer Dinesh Karthik has named his top five players to watch out for in the upcoming Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2023. The keeper batter picked three Indians and two Australians as the key players for the series.

Dinesh Karthik picks his top 5 players to watch out for in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2023 

The countdown for the much anticipated Border-Gavaskar Trophy has begun. The two cricketing heavyweights will clash with each other in the four-match Test series and after the series, we will get the No.1 ranked Test side and most likely the finalists of the World Test Championship.

The Test series between India and Australia will kick start with the Nagpur Test on February 9th. The focus will then shift to the second Test that will be played on 17th February in Delhi. The third game between the teams is slated to take place on 1st March in Dharamshala whereas the last game will be played on 9th March in Ahmedabad.

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With just one day remaining before the start of the series, Karthik has named 5 key players to watch out for in the series. The keeper batter picked Virat Kohli and Steve Smith as two prime batters. Both the batting greats have often delivered for the side.

The Indian batter has amassed 1,682 against Australia at an average of 48.05 to go with seven hundreds and five half-centuries. Whereas Smith has aggregated 1742 Test runs at a sensational average of 72.58 against India along with 8 centuries.

Karthik then picked two veteran spinners in Nathan Lyon and R Ashwin as he feels that this series is all about spinners. If we talk about the stats, the Indian spinner in just 18 games has picked 89 wickets against Australia at an average of 31.48 while Lyon has scalped 94 wickets from 22 Tests at an average of 34.76.

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The last key player for Karthik is Shreyas Iyer, who is all set to miss the first Test. The keeper batter feels that the games will “definitely be played on tracks that aid spin and Iyer is someone who plays spin beautifully. If he gets going, especially against spin, he can hit a ball a long way and cause a lot of trouble.”

Dinesh Karthik’s top-5 players to watch out for in BGT 2023 

Virat Kohli
Steve Smith
R Ashwin
Nathan Lyon
Shreyas Iyer 

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Dinesh Karthik’s Indian playing 11 for the first Test against Australia 

Here’s Dinesh Karthik’s playing 11 for the first Test against Australia:

KL Rahul
Rohit Sharma 
Cheteshwar Pujara
Virat Kohli 
Suryakumar Yadav 
Ravindra Jadeja
K S Bharat 
R Ashwin
Axar Patel 
Mohammad Shami
Mohammed Siraj 

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