Focus on struggling Samson ahead of fourth T20I against New Zealand
VISAKHAPATNAM: It was a little past 5 PM on a warm Tuesday evening in Visakhapatnam. India bowling coach Morne Morkel had just finished his media duties. Out on the field at the ACA-VDCA Stadium, Shreyas Iyer had already hit the nets. Then came Sanju Samson, padded up, walking alongside batting coach Sitanshu Kotak.
Samson went near the nets where Iyer was batting and was seen having a detailed discussion with head coach Gautam Gambhir. After a few minutes, they walked over to the other side of the pitch, where Samson took guard under the watchful eyes of Gambhir, who would stand near the stumps for the entirety of his batting stint. With good reason.
Coming into the fourth T20I against New Zealand, the focus has been on Samson’s string of low scores in the series — 10, 6, 0 it reads. After being picked ahead Shubman Gill, captain in two of the three formats, for this series as well as the T20 World Cup, there was bound to be some pressure on him. But it's fair to say he has not yet lit up the series . And what has added pressure is that the Ishan Kishan, coming into the team because of the injury to Tilak Verma, has grabbed his opportunity with both hands, especially a violent 23-ball 76 in Raipur in the second game.
Samson, meanwhile, chipped Kyle Jamieson to short midwicket in the first match. He, then, went too early into a shot, trying to loft Matt Henry and ended up mistiming it to mid-on. In the third match, he was undone by a beautiful outswinger from Henry. The ball pitched on leg-stump, squared him up before hitting the top of off. Such was his struggle against high-quality pacers that former coach and commentator WV Raman took to social media to say this: “Samson will be inconsistent as long as he doesn't adjust the speed of his bat on the downswing in relation to the pace of the ball. In simple terms, one can't drive a car at the same speed all the time, everywhere.”
Inconsistency. That is the word that has followed Samson throughout his career. Even when he looks good, the lack of scores regularly has cast a shadow over his place. One look at his numbers tell the story. Since 2024, Samson has 470 runs in 17 innings as T20I opener at 29.37 average and 178.7 strike rate. In a dynamic and long batting line-up such as India's, that does seem good. However, of the 470 runs, 327 came in three innings when he scored hundreds against Bangladesh and South Africa (2) in 2024. It means, in the remaining 14 innings, he has 143 runs to show at 10.21 average, including four ducks and four single digit scores. Which is why, with every passing failure, pressure seems to be mounting on Samson, at least from the outside.
Morkel, however, felt Samson was one good innings away from hitting the ground running. “We all know the cliche word, (but) for us building up to the World Cup, it's important for the guys to find that peak performance at the right time. He's training well, he's hitting the ball very well, so I think it's just a matter of time for him to get his score on board,” said Morkel.
True to the bowling coach’s words, Samson was teeing off against the Indian spinners in the nets, hitting them between cover and mid-wicket. Varun Chakravarthy, Ravi Bishnoi, Axar Patel, and Kuldeep Yadav all bowled to Samson but he wasn't overly troubled by any of them. There was perhaps one mis-timed pull off a throwdown specialist, but barring that, Samson looked like he was in a zone. He batted for about 30 minutes before coming back for a second stint, where it was just throwdown specialists hitting the good length areas. Samson tried to focus on hitting them down the ground before turning to his keeping drills. By 7.30 PM, the DJ at the ground had started blasting Bollywood music, dew had come on the field, and Iyer had batted for close to 90 minutes across either net.
In about 24 hours, it will be clear whether Samson will be able to replicate what he did in the nets and find some form. Or whether he will have to wait till his home ground to finally get some runs.