The Indian management – captain Shreyas Iyer and head coach Gautam Gambhir – have been caught in their own mess. They gave Sanju Samson – the player of the tournament at the T20 World Cup 2026 – a 3-match run before cutting him off. Two games against Ireland and one solitary match against England, which was washed out, were what Samson got.
Sanju Samson cut loose
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, the new sensation and teenage prodigy, was brought in as the second opener to replace Samson. The management had set a precedent. They’ll drop a match-winner, who literally won the team a T20 World Cup, after 3 poor outings. Well, guess what? The Samson replacement has now failed in 3 straight matches.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi struggles as well
14 (10), 13 (5) and 15 (10) – that’s all Sooryavanshi has managed against England. He’s shown moments of brilliance but has been worked out by Jofra Archer, his Rajasthan Royals teammate. The express pacer has bowled back-of-length and shorter, or yorkers, to him.
He bounced him out in Nottingham with a sharp bumper on the leg stump. The ball whizzed past Sooryavanshi, and he was back to the pavillion in a jiffy. The teenager looked to counter that with a back-and-to-his-right shuffle in Bristol, but it didn’t work. Archer bounced only one or two bouncers but went hard at the back of the length area.
After a few mistimes, Sooryavanshi finally found a fielder in the third over. The 15-year-old has all the talent in the world and decades of time. He’ll work it out. There’s no hurry or worry. But that isn’t the point. The management was fine to drop Samson after three failures, and the selectors dropped or rested him for the Zimbabwe series.
What will the management do now?
All of this happened after he scored 97*, 89, and 89 in his three previous innings before that. Mind you, these were knockout matches in the T20 World Cup. Now, where does that leave you? Well, it exposes your short-term planning and short-sightedness. You can’t back Sooryavanshi now, who has nothing to show in international cricket. Samson had three match-winning knocks and has been cut loose.
His replacement hasn’t done much better. Where to now? Go back and get abused for not backing Samson in the first place. If you stick with Sooryavanshi, you’ll be called biased because the two batters haven’t been treated the same. In the end, one thing is true: the management hasn’t handled the situation well. They deserve the flak coming their way.
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