Amidst the flood of gorgeous shots Sanju Samson unfurled at the Wankhede, two moments lingered. One private, one public.
Before every ball, Samson would tap his chest directly below his throat with his right gloved thumb, then wriggle it through the space under his helmet grill to gently place it on his lips. Kissing it good luck.
That private moment was routine. A tick, a matter of habit. But it was his public moment that captured his sense of responsibility.
Ever so often, when he detected younger partners showing nerves, he would walk across for a chat. They say that with top batsmen, one good knock can turn the tide. The 97 against the West Indies did exactly that. Not just for Samson — the man who’d been left out, who might have played his last game had he failed — but also for his teammates, whose doubts he tried to clear with every mid-pitch conversation.
There he was walking across when Abhishek Sharma showed nerves. Twice in the over, he sensed his younger partner getting jumpy. When Will Jacks slid two deliveries with his unique squeezed-out release that makes the ball veer in, Abhishek was cramped for space. Both times Samson was across in a flash. He even shouted words of counsel from the other end.
But Abhishek couldn’t control his nerves and fell to a similar ball. Samson didn’t give up, repeating his walk-across routine with Ishan Kishan, who listened. When the latter slog-swept a six, Samson was there. When he heaved Sam Curran for a six, Samson patted his back. When he miscued, Samson was at his ears.
Similarly, when Jofra Archer tucked Shivam Dube with back-of-length kickers into his body, he ensured Dube wouldn’t try to slug out, but just tap a single to get off strike. Samson crash-landed the next ball over long-off. In the chase too, he embedded himself thick into the action – often making field changes, running to speak to the bowlers, was in Suryakumar Yadav’s ear. Samson, the senior player, was truly on show in every sense of the word.
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Sparkling strokeplay
For all the mentorship role that might go unnoticed, it’s his sparkling shots that would linger in the memory of fans for a long while.
Underneath that sparkle was a quietness, an absence of the frenzy that had marked his fallow days. Stillness has descended in his headspace and at the crease. No more needless shimmying around, no more fruitless too-early presses of the feet. A back movement at the most, a press-down of the front foot to facilitate switching of balance — and above all, that stupefying free-flow of the arms to empower the bat flow that had once charmed Brian Lara, and made him a Samson fan.
The beautiful violence of Samson can make it seem as if all England did was feed him the slot. That was not the case.
Sanju Samson smashed a 42-ball 89 in the T20 World Cup semi-final against England on Thursday at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. (Express photo by Narendra Vaskar)
Curran tried a variety of slower ones — the moon ball, that extra- slow delivery, was whacked over mid-on. Samson waited and waited for it. Just as he has done for the change in his fortunes.
When Archer kept trying to bounce him with the new ball, Samson kept pulling him to disarray. A slice of luck arrived when he was on 22. A rare full-length ball from Archer, hit straight to mid-on. Harry Brook — who’d dropped two series-turning clangers in the Adelaide Ashes Test recently — dropped another sitter. When Archer tried the slower ones, the ball was thrown back from the boundary.
The lack of big hits too showed his composure — against Adil Rashid. In no mood to let his ego come into play against England’s best bowler, he mostly rotated the strike.
The end came abruptly when Will Jacks squeezed a slider well outside off, away from the reach of Samson, who holed out to sweeper cover.
The crowd immediately sprang to its feet to convey its respects and gratitude to the man who had pulled India out of the brink against West Indies, and now has powered them to the final. The man who counseled his younger partners, who wagged his thumb at himself before every ball and at his critics through his deeds, walked off to a thunderous ovation.
