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It isn’t the best Zimbabwe team out there. But with India slightly pegging back at 38/2 on a surface that wasn’t the best of batting conditions, somebody had to step up.
That somebody was none other than Sanju Samson.
Samson walked back into the Indian team after a stellar Indian Premier League 2024 season. During his 531-run campaign for Rajasthan Royals (RR), Samson responded to SOS calls multiple times.
If one game required him to smack at 10 runs/over, he went all guns blazing, and if the other wanted him to guide his team home, he moulded his role in such a manner. So, batting in a pressure situation wasn’t alien to him, in whatever stretch.
But doing it at the franchise level and the international level are two different things. One thing that has constantly haunted the Kerala batter has been his failure to convert opportunities into headlines in Indian blue.
Prior to the fifth T20I against Zimbabwe, Samson had 27 T20I appearances against his name. Even in that, though, unfortunately, there’s a catch. He’s never been able to marry consistency with power at the highest level, with just one half-century, a 77 against Ireland in Dublin back in 2022.
Since that encounter, he’s batted in ten innings without being able to muster up a half-century. Sometimes, the situation has demanded him to be a little brash, sometimes, he’s given away his wicket, and other times, he has not been able to take the opportunity by the scruff of the neck.
Most of the time, however, he has failed to bat in the manner that the game warrants. That opportunity presented itself in Harare.
One more wicket in this situation, and India would have had their power-hitters - Riyan Parag, Shivam Dube and Rinku Singh - out in the middle exposed early. That’s where Samson read the room and played an innings that showed his maturity.
For the first 14 deliveries that he faced at the crease, Samson showed a much more circumspect side, knocking the ball for a single and pinching a double when there was an open field.
Just when the runs were not coming from the other end either, Samson realised the need to up the ante, and that’s when he picked up the favourable match-up, countering Sikandar Raza with a six down the ground. Even if the contest wasn’t going to have any impact on the outcome of the series, Samson’s six showed how much his game awareness had improved.
The fact that Samson didn’t just target one particular area of the ground, which was highlighted when he lofted the leg spinner Brandon Mavuta over the cover region for a monstrous six, was certainly impressive.
You could look at Mavuta’s reaction, and it would paint the best picture. It wasn’t a bad delivery by any stretch of the imagination, but that’s where Samson is too darn good. He makes even a slightly tougher delivery into a hit-me ball with his range.
Three sixes, three different areas, Samson showed why he was no longer just a talent.
It amplified when Samson took on Richard Ngarava down the ground for a six. It was as smart as a cricketer could think, and most of Samson’s ability with the bat also improved after he took over as the captain for the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Rajasthan Royals.
“I have been leading RR for the last four years. There have been some legends. I take care of legends and youngsters. You understand cricket a bit more,” Samson said, reported Cricbuzz.
“When you are a captain, you think about other players and other teams as well. I have been getting better.”
Understanding the field and the bowler’s plans was lacking in Samson’s early career. But over the last three years, constant thinking about the game has elevated his own game to the next level.
747 days.
That’s how long it has been between Samson’s two half-centuries. But what has made the second one special is that he’s now understood his game well. That didn’t, however, come at the cost of making a career with ‘highlight reels’.
Time and again, it is that six that travelled 110m that will form the highlight reels. That’s what people want to see. That’s what still makes Sanju, Sanju Samson.
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