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Sanju Samson has only managed to score 35 runs in the first four T20Is of the ongoing five-match series between India and England.
Sanjay Manjrekar defends Sanju Samson. (Picture Credit: Sportzpics, AP)
Former India batter Sanjay Manjrekar, who has now donned the hat of an expert and commentator, has come out in defence of star wicketkeeper-batter Sanju Samson. Samson is facing a lot of criticism these days for his poor show in the ongoing five-match T20I series against England. In four matches played so far, Samson has only managed to register scores of 26, 5, 3, and 1 run. Samson came into the series after scoring three centuries in his last five T20I matches for India, and there were high expectations from him.
According to Manjrekar, talents like Samson should be allowed a long patch of failures because of the kind of impact they can make when they are on song.
“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 the role of opener for India in the shortest format of the game, Samson, who won T20 World Cup last year, has scored 506 runs in 13 matches and has three centuries and one fifty to his name.
