Dhoni and Karthik were competing for the wicketkeeper-batsman slot in the mid-2000s.
During the mid-2000s, Dhoni and Karthik were competing for the wicketkeeper-batsman slot in the Indian team and the former once bowled to the latter in the nets.
The incident was from India A’s tour of Kenya and Zimbabwe in 2004. Both of them were part of the Indian squad on that trip while Chopra was Dhoni’s roommate.
“I want to take you back to the 2004 A tour of Kenya and Zimbabwe. MS Dhoni was also part of that tour and I distinctly remember Dhoni bowling to you in the nets. Because he was my roommate, I told Dhoni 'don’t bowl to him (Karthik), he is your competition. And if you want to bowl, at least bat. What are you doing? He will play for India, he is almost there, sometimes you need to also play'. But Dhoni said, ‘no, no, I want to bowl’,” Chopra recalled the story in a chat with Karthik on his Youtube channel.
Dhoni finished the triangular tournament as the leading run-getter with 362 runs, including two centuries. He went to make his India debut later in the same year against Bangladesh in an ODI match.
While Karthik made his India debut some months before Dhoni in 2004, it was the latter who went on to establish his place in the national team in all forms of the game.
As soon as Dhoni made his mark in international cricket with his clean hitting and brilliant wicket-keeping, Karthik knew that the door was closed for him.
“When Dhoni came in, he took the complete country by storm and I knew that door was closed. Keeper-batsman is always a decade-long job. Syed Kirmani was there, then Kiran More. Dhoni was a once-in-a-generation kind of a cricketer. Take Ian Healy or Adam Gilchrist, if you are a good keeper, you are there for 10-12 years,” Karthik told Chopra.
“I never brood over things. My nature has always been - what is next? That has always been my constant question to myself. At that point, it was to become a batter. There was a spot in the middle-order and then as opener. One thing that people, including Dhoni, would say - ‘you’re so talented as a batsman, you can open’. So that gave me a lot of confidence and then Rahul Dravid also said you have the skills to be a pure batter. So I went to domestic cricket, scored lots of runs, then got an opportunity as an opener and did well,” he further remarked.