Sanju Samson's T20 World Cup Journey: A Tale of Perseverance and Finally Reaching the Spotlight

Sanju Samson's journey with the Indian team has truly been full of ups and downs, but luck and his perseverance have now beautifully converged.

‘I am not here to score as many runs as possible. I am here to score a few but very impactful runs for the team.’ Sanju Samson said this in May 2022 on a YouTube show called Breakfast with Champions.

At that time, he had just been dropped from India's T20 squad for the series against South Africa. This meant he was not in the selectors' plans for that year's T20 World Cup.

He was dropped from the team after scoring 39 off 25 balls and 18 off 12 balls in his last two T20 Internationals. This happened when he was having a typical IPL season: he was among the top 10 run-scorers and had the third-highest strike rate among those ten, but he was the only player whose average was below 30.

The state of Indian T20 cricket in May 2022 was not what it is today. At that time, Samson's statement could have been interpreted as a challenge or provocation. But today, that statement doesn't seem as serious because the entire world's perspective on T20 has changed.

When he made that statement, Samson was 27 years old and had been playing an aggressive style for most of his career, like a 2026 T20 batter. He was in his tenth IPL season and was the captain of his franchise. He was a superstar who had not made much of an impact in international cricket, or perhaps hadn't even gotten the chances; he had played only 12 T20Is and one ODI.

Samson's ESPN Cricinfo profile still begins with this line, ‘Sanju Samson is perhaps the first high-level Indian player who is known more for his performance for his IPL franchise than for the national team.’

Perhaps it is time to update this profile now, but that sentence still holds true, although in the months and years since May 2022, Indian cricket has slowly made space for Samson in its heart. Indian cricket has started adopting his style. Slowly and painfully at first, and then so rapidly that sometimes it seems he has outpaced himself.

When India won the 2024 T20 World Cup, Samson spent the entire tournament on the bench. He had to wait a long time; his turn hadn't come yet, but it seemed certain to arrive. At the start of this T20 World Cup, at the age of 31, he again looked at risk of spending the entire tournament on the bench. He was in the team, but not in form, couldn't make the first XI, and looking at the performance of other batters, there was no clear path back into the team.

Now his batting style is no longer different from others. Generally speaking, almost all Indian batters play like him now; they aim to play short but aggressive innings rather than staying long at the crease. And Samson's young peers did not have to fight the system to secure their place as much as he did.

The system now understands the risks involved in allowing rare and precious talents like Abhishek Sharma to score quickly. Simply put, the 2026 system would not drop such an aggressive batter just for getting out for a duck in three consecutive matches.

For a batter currently in the team to be dropped, they must go through a long period of poor form and give reasons other than just low scores.

In the year leading up to this World Cup, Samson went through such poor form twice. First, in the home series against England, he was repeatedly dismissed by short balls, against a bowling attack that was expert at bowling short balls. Perhaps that is why India brought back Shubman Gill at the opening, and Samson's place became uncertain. Initially, he was pushed into the unfamiliar middle order, and later he was replaced by Jitesh Sharma, a wicketkeeper more accustomed to that role.

Then, when India returned to its old team structure, Gill and Jitesh were dropped, and Samson was re-established as an opener. He went through a terribly bad patch of form. To borrow a famous quote from Suryakumar Yadav, as the World Cup approached, Samson was not only out of runs but also out of form. And this happened at a time when another player playing exactly the same role as him, Ishan Kishan, was in the best form of his life.

Unlike in the past, the reason Samson was out of the team this time was not because the system did not trust him. The reason he was out was that someone else was doing his job better than him. Indian cricket had found Samson, and perhaps had even surpassed him.

But sometimes luck helps in strange ways. If Samson couldn't bring differentiation to the team based on his batting style, he provided that difference at a fundamental level: in how he stood at the crease. At a time when the team was dominated by left-handed batters, causing problems for India, he provided the advantage of being a right-handed batter. And if that wasn't enough reason for India to bring him back, an external circumstance created a spot for him.

On Sunday at Eden Gardens, where the scent of comebacks and fairy tales mingled in the air, Samson lived the moment he had dreamed of his entire life. He was playing his 328th T20 match; only 10 Indian players have played that many matches: Rohit Sharma (463), Dinesh Karthik (415), Virat Kohli (414), MS Dhoni (405), Suryakumar (358), Ravindra Jadeja (346), Suresh Raina (336), Shikhar Dhawan (334), R Ashwin (333), Yuzvendra Chahal (329). In many respects, he had already proven himself at the international level; only four batters have surpassed the 3 centuries he has scored in T20 Internationals.

But Samson had achieved this massive record without playing those innings that the outside world, beyond the die-hard cricket fans, would immediately remember.

Every innings matters. A team builds upon the foundation of innings played in bilateral series and group stage matches to reach a point where it needs someone to play a solid innings in a knockout or virtual knockout game. All those matches matter.

Samson knows this; until Sunday, he would have defended this point even at the cost of his life. But now he has lived that moment on Sunday, playing the main character in a drama that encapsulated his entire career and life in 50 balls played over 108 minutes. After a long wait, he has finally arrived in his true avatar.

It took time, but Indian cricket embraced Sanju Samson; the very style of cricket was molded in his image. On Sunday, he returned the warmth of that embrace.

ESPN Cricinfo