New signing Murali Kartik says he is ready for the challenge of trying to bowl Somerset to Championship glory on the flat Taunton pitches.

Kartik has been signed on a one-year deal to replace departing skipper Justin Langer as the county's overseas player for 2010.

After one particularly frustrating day in the field this season Langer said that he did not think the other Murali – Muttiah Muralitharan, Sri Lanka's holder of the world record for Test wickets – would have made any difference.

But the 33-year-old former India Test player has five years of county experience with Lancashire and Middlesex and arrives with his eyes wide open.

Kartik actually made his Middlesex debut at Taunton in April 2007. Middlesex made 600-4 and Somerset replied with 850-7.

"Ed Smith, the captain, said 'We have four fast bowlers, so early season you are not going to get much of a bowl – possibly six or seven overs out of 100'.

"I ended up bowling 50 overs!" said the left-armer, who claimed four wickets at a good rate, including that of his new captain Marcus Trescothick.

"It is not an Old Trafford wicket or Lord's, which is very flat. As Tres has said, when you are an international spinner and have been playing for a long time you would like to challenge yourself on wickets like this.

"It is a pressure but there is pressure every time you play. Whenever I go onto the park I know I have to bowl well.

"I don't bother whether I get five wickets or six wickets, I just work hard every day.

"Sometimes I might have to be a stock bowler and sometimes I might be a strike bowler. As a cricketer if you understand that early you help your side every day.

"To be playing for a county like Somerset, who have been vying for top honours for the last two years, I think I will add a different dimension to the attack.

"It is a great opportunity and a new challenge for a player like me, who has been playing in England for the last five seasons."

So will success for Somerset CCC help Kartik back into the India reckoning now Anil Kumble has retired? The man from Delhi is not so sure.

"I have no idea," he said. "I don't think about it because I got dropped after getting 6-27 against Australia. I was dropped the next morning.

"Every time I have played for Lancashire or Middlesex I have always done well and I have never looked at county cricket as a stepping stone to play international cricket.

"I play county cricket because I love the challenge of coming out and playing on different sorts of wickets and as an overseas player the key is to maintain that consistency and hunger from the first day to the last of the season."

While playing for Middlesex at Lord's, Kartik lived in a house just outside the Grace Gates.

"I once played league cricket for Ramsbottom in the Lancashire League and that is very similar to this sort of environment," he said during his house-hunting visit to Taunton yesterday. "We don't mind it at all. I come from Delhi and there are lots of things happening there so I don't mind a place like Taunton, which is a lot more chilled out to other places I have lived in."

Kartik is expected to arrive in mid-May next year after playing in the Indian Premier League, which finishes on April 25.

"We have had a chat and I reckon I will have a three-week break before I come but if it so happens that there are some Twenty20 games that happen before that I might come early," he said.

Somerset CCC's final game of this season – before they head out to India for the Champions League under Langer's captaincy – is the Pro40 clash with Durham at Taunton on Sunday.

If Somerset win and Sussex lose to Worcestershire, Langer's men will claim the one-day league title for the first time since 1979.