Despite a rollicking few months as a T20I batter last year where he smashed three hundreds within five innings, Sanju Samson has had an indifferent start to 2025 with four successive failures against England, with the seamers persisting with an effective short-ball ploy against the India wicket-keeper.
Samson’s scores in the ongoing series against read 26, 5, 3 and 1 – falling thrice to Jofra Archer and Saqib Mahmood in the fourth outing in Pune on Friday. The Kerala batter has, however, found backing from former India batter Sanjay Manjrekar who appreciated Samson’s high-risk high-reward approached in T20Is.
“When you are looking at a T20I talent, batting talent, you have got to see when they are playing well what kind of impact they can make, what contribution they can make. And you see with Sanju Samson, when he plays well, he gets an incredible hundred and puts your team in a winning position. So, such people are allowed failures and maybe a long patch of failures as well because that’s the nature of these as a T20 cricketer, where you can’t play yourself, where you have to keep taking those risks that they take. Hopefully, there’s that one innings that just propels him back into form,” Manjrekar told on ESPNCricinfo.
“So, with Sanju Samson, I think you should just make sure that he gets as many innings as possible purely because when he gets into form and plays well, he makes it all worth it. If that was another guy who was failing in this fashion and when he got into form just got you 40 or 50, then maybe you would offer him a shorter rope. But I will have a lot of patience with this current version of Sanju Samson,” Manjrekar added.
