Former India batter Sanjay Manjrekar has spoken out in support of ace wicketkeeper-batsman Sanju Samson. Samson is under the lens for his poor performance in the ongoing five-match T20I series against England.
Samson’s scoring in four matches thus far has been 26, 5, 3, and 1. Samson came into the series having scored three centuries in his previous five T20I matches for India, and there were high expectations of him.
However, those runs had come against Bangladesh and a weakened pace attack of South Africa. Against the extreme pace of Jofra Archer and Mark Wood, Samson has struggled to get the timing right on his shots.
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Artists like Samson should be given a long period of failure because of the impact they can have when they have momentum, feels the former Indian crickter.
“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 may be 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, and hopefully, there’s one innings that just propels him back into form. 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 said on ESPNCricinfo.
Since taking over as India’s opener in the shortest version of the game, Samson, who won the T20 World Cup last year, has amassed 506 runs in 13 matches, including three hundreds and one fifty.
(With inputs from agencies)