Samson Redeemed: Sanju proves his credentials with a knock for the ages at T20 World Cup

Having long struggled to translate potential to performance on a consistent basis, batter underlines credentials by hauling India into the T20 World Cup semifinal with a knock for the ages.
KOLKATA: Has Sanju Samson finally cemented a permanent place in India’s T20 XI? Head coach Gautam Gambhir surely hopes so, following the opener’s brilliant, unbeaten 97 against the West Indies at Eden Gardens on Sunday, an innings that carried India into the T20 World Cup semifinals.

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Set 196 to win after the West Indies made 195/4, India got home with four balls to spare — and Samson was at the heart of the chase. That the next best contribution was Tilak Varma’s 27 shows the immense role Samson played in holding India’s innings together in a high-pressure game. On a night when the target kept looming and wickets kept interrupting momentum, India needed Samson to come good. He did so in splendid fashion.




Samson knew he had produced something special. “It means the whole world to me,” he said at the post-match presentation. “Right from the day I started playing, this is the knock I was waiting for. I had a lot of ups and downs, kept doubting myself, thinking ‘will I make it’? But I am thankful to the almighty for blessing me today.”

Gambhir reiterated that he always had faith in the Kerala batter. “Today was a day when he probably showed his true potential. And hopefully, this is a time for him to kick off,” the coach said.

Samson has more often been out of the team than in it since his debut against Zimbabwe in 2015. In fact, after his debut, where he scored 19, he had to wait till 2020 for a comeback. Even then, he remained a stop-gap option, called upon only when someone was injured or rested.

Although he has three hundreds and four fifties in his 60-match T20I career, sceptics would still point to his strings of single-figure or low double-digit scores to argue that he never lived up to his potential. Gambhir, however, pointed out that even some of those low scores have mattered, like the 24 against Zimbabwe in Chennai in the previous game.

“People will keep looking at his scores and stuff, but then coming back into the team and then playing that kind of innings of 23-24 must have given him a lot of confidence,” Gambhir said. He needed that confidence after a torrid series against New Zealand in which he managed only 46 runs from five matches.

“When bad patches happen, you have to give yourself some time,” batting coach Sitanshu Kotak said. “We know Samson is a class batter and this innings was due from him.”

Kotak admitted Samson was drafted into the XI because India had three left-handers at the top and were losing wickets to off-spinners early. “We felt we had to do something different and everyone trusted Samson,” he said.

Sunday’s innings was, in many ways, Samson in full control: no rash shots, no visible panic — just a methodical tightening of grip on the chase, with the target always in view. “I actually thought that he never accelerated the innings,” Gambhir said. “It was just very normal cricketing shots and I never saw any muscling the ball as well.”

Samson’s innings drew praise from the rival camp as well, with West Indies skipper Shai Hope giving him an ‘A-plus’. “You must give a guy credit when he’s playing really well,” Hope said. “He (Samson) shot the ball very nicely from the beginning all the way through to the end of the innings and he paced it really nicely. He was very smart and calculated with the way he went about his strokes. Wish he didn’t play that innings against us.”

It was also a telling sight: Suryakumar Yadav doffing his cap and bowing to Samson days after wondering, with a laugh, how he could make the Kerala cricketer play in place of Abhishek Sharma and Tilak Varma.





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