MS Dhoni's decision to rest for the Lankan tour has opened up the doors for two young keepers but will they stand up to the test?

With excessive cricket finding its first victim in ODI skipper MS Dhoni and his opting out of the Test series in the emerald isles, Karthik and Patel now find themselves back in the big league .

The international razamatazz, however, is not new to both of these players. In fact both the keepers debuted before the current ODI skipper made his foray into International cricket. Both of them had fairly successful stints with the Indian team. The advent of Dhoni, since has made them warm the benches more often than they would have liked.

Patel, Test cricket's youngest wicketkeeper made his debut at the age of 17 years and 153 days. His match saving 19 runs against England at Trent Bridge found special mention in the words of the then England wicket keeper Alec Stewart. His batting abilities were never doubted by his critics but his form behind the wickets was getting just too bad for the selectors to ignore them.

In fact it's his batting capabilities and presumably improved keeping that is bringing him back in the side. His last two years in domestic cricket have been excellent and include three hundreds in the tour to Zimbabwe which he visited alongside the India 'A' team and a century against the visiting South Africa 'A' side. Sri Lanka has been a happy hunting place for Patel and it was in Lanka where while playing for India ‘A' he got a national call to tour England.

Karthik on the other hand is a tremendously agile and a fit player. He is no doubt a better man to have behind the stumps than Parthiv but his ability to handle the willow in the longer format of the game is not that good if compared with the southpaw. His inconsistency with the bat was responsible for him being axed from the Indian team and since then though he made a few comebacks but none have been authoritative enough to stamp his place back in the side.

It would be interesting to see which of these players get a go ahead in the series since both of them are certainly close to tradeoffs to each other. If Parthiv is a better batsman, Dinesh is much better keeper. Whether the think tank plays an extra batsman in the form of a keeper or whether they would opt for six batsmen and would play the better keeper is the big question?