The BCCI selectors on Tuesday (April 30th, 2024) announced Team India’s 15-member squad for the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024. The tournament will be held in the USA and the West Indies and will commence on the 01st of June 2024.
Rohit Sharma will lead the team, with all-rounder Hardik Pandya as his deputy. However, all eyes are on Kerala wicketkeeper Sanju Samson, who is also leading the Rajasthan Royals in IPL 2024.
Even before the team was announced, Sanju Samson’s name was trending on social media platforms. From former cricket players to pundits to journalists, everyone was speculating whether the Royals skipper would be on that plane to the Caribbean or not.
It seems that the Ajit Agarkar-led selection committee finally decided to reward Samson with a well-deserved spot in the Indian T20 squad. Maybe his stellar form in the ongoing IPL 2024 has played a significant role in his selection.
Samson, Rajasthan’s leading run-getter in the IPL 2024
The Rajasthan Royals are sitting pretty at the top of the table in IPL 2024, with eight wins from nine matches. Samson, the skipper, has led the team well and is also their leading run-getter this season.
Till the game against the Lucknow Super Giants in Lucknow (played on April 27), Samson has smashed 385 runs from nine matches at a strike rate of 161.08 with the help of four half-centuries.
It’s not just the runs that Samson has scored in the IPL that caught the attention of the selectors. It is the way he has scored those runs, in a winning cause, under extreme pressure cooker situations that has made the difference.
He has made batting at the number 3 spot look easy and scored runs against top-quality bowlers that literally forced the selectors to not overlook him this time around.
Samson made his debut in 2015.
Sanju Samson is not a youngster anymore. He is a 29-year-old experienced batter who made his debut for India way back in 2015 under MS Dhoni’s leadership.
Not the tallest of guys on the cricket field, Samson packs a punch and relies more on hand-eye coordination, timing, and finding the gaps on the field. Over the past nine seasons, Sanju Samson has been the biggest mystery in Indian cricket. Not that he wasn’t scoring runs, but his selection into the team and later forcing him to warm the benches irked his fans considerably.
If selected, he wasn’t included in the playing XI, despite some big names failing considerably and consistently over the last couple of seasons, which sometimes made Sanju Samson’s fans wonder: what more can he do to make it into the playing XI?
This time around, Samson isn’t just knocking on the selector’s doors; he left no stone unturned to ensure he was there on the flight to the West Indies.
In July 2015, Samson played his first T20I against Zimbabwe in Harare. The smiles didn’t last long, as he had to wait four and a half years to don the Indian Blues again. Overall, the right-handed batter has scored 374 runs in 25 T20I matches at an average of 18.7 and a strike rate of 133.1.
Samson has played 16 ODIs and 25 T20Is for India so far.
Inconsistency was one area where Sanju Samson lacked, but not any more. Was it just the performances that kept Samson’s hopes alive? Definitely not.
Here are the 3 P’s that kept his hopes alive.
Patience:
Nine years after Samson made his international debut, he could never seal a spot in the playing XI. What did the man do? He never gave up on his dreams of playing for the country.
Every time Samson was dropped, he went into the domestic circuit and the IPL and scored a plethora of runs.
Persistence:
Over the years, Samson has stayed true to his goals.
Every time he was ignored, he went back to the drawing board, figured out the loopholes in his technique, and came back stronger with some scintillating domestic and IPL performances.
Performance:
Samson has been the mainstay for the Rajasthan Royals for a couple of years now. With 385 runs from nine matches, Samson is the leading run scorer among all Indian wicketkeeper batters in the IPL 2024. His unbeaten 77 off 33 balls to guide the Rajasthan Royals home against the Lucknow Super Giants in a chase of 197 is probably the best of the lot.
While speaking about domestic T20 performances, Samson’s 122 off just 56 deliveries for Kerala still remains one of the greatest displays in the Indian domestic setup.
With the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup coming up, all the participating 20 teams will be eyeing the coveted prize come June 29th.
For India to lift the trophy after a gap of 17 long years, they need an X-factor.
Believe it or not, just like Yuvraj Singh in 2007, Samson has all the qualities to be India’s X-factor in the Caribbean.
Sanju Samson’s story epitomizes the virtue of patience. His perseverance has proven that talent, coupled with resilience, ultimately earns its deserved place in the limelight.
India’s squad for the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024:
Rohit Sharma (Captain), Hardik Pandya (Vice Captain), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (WK), Sanju Samson (WK), Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd. Siraj.
Traveling Reserves : Shubhman Gill, Rinku Singh, Khalel Ahmed, Avesh Khan.
The Sportz Planet Desk,
Atharva Shetye.
