New Delhi: Wicketkeeper-batter Sanju Samson credited India head coach Gautam Gambhir for backing him to succeed in T20Is, and revealed him saying that he would only be dropped from the team if he registered 21 ducks.
With Gambhir taking charge as India’s head coach after the T20 World Cup win and Suryakumar Yadav appointed as the captain, Samson was given the opportunity to open the batting and has formed a formidable opening pair with left-handed batter Abhishek Sharma.
“So, suddenly, the change happened after the T20 World Cup. So Gautam bhai came in, and Surya came in as the captain. I was playing a Duleep Trophy game in Andhra. Surya was playing for the other team.”
“He told me, ‘There is a good opportunity coming up for you. We have seven games lined up, and I am going to give you all seven games as an opener’. The words coming out from the captain’s mouth itself actually felt, Oh wow, great,” said Samson in a video on former off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin’s YouTube channel on Saturday.
Further throwing light on what Gambhir said to him, Samson said, “I played two games in Sri Lanka but was unable to score runs. I was a bit down in the dressing room, and Gautam bhai came up to me and asked what had happened.”
“I said, ‘After a long time, I got a chance, but I failed to capitalise’. He said, ‘So what? I’ll drop you if you register 21 ducks’. That’s the word that he used. That kind of confidence from the captain and the coach has definitely raised my confidence. That really helped me to go out there and perform,” he added.
So far, Samson has featured in 42 T20Is for India, scoring 861 runs at an average of 25.32 and a strike rate of 152.38. He has registered three centuries and two fifties in the format, with his maiden hundred coming against Bangladesh in Hyderabad last year, followed by two more centuries against South Africa.
He will be in contention for the Indian team selection for the Asia Cup in the UAE from September 9-28. Samson admitted that being in and out of the team since his T20I debut in 2015 had left him frustrated, but things changed for the better for him after the arrival of Gambhir and Suryakumar.
“I know this thing, being on and off from the team and all those things were happening for a very long period of time, so honestly, I feel like it was not easy, and I think it was definitely not easy to have those kinds of feelings.”
“Like, I almost completed eight to nine years of my international career, but I only played 15 games or something. I always tried to keep myself in a very positive frame of mind. I always kept on telling myself, ’Okay, it will happen, but different people have different journeys. Yours is a different journey’,” he concluded.
(IANS)
