T20 World Cup: Samson Special Sends India into Semis

When Sanju Samson hit the winning runs against the West Indies in a virtual quarterfinal clash at the Eden Gardens on Sunday night, he collapsed on to his padded knees and, being the devout believer that he says he is, crossed himself. Despite the thrill of the chase that he had just anchored with one of the great knocks of any T20 World Cup, no one approached him for those precious few seconds, even as he folded his hands and looked up at the inky Kolkata sky. Not Shivam Dube from the non-striker’s end; not the vanquished West Indians. They all waited, for this was Samson’s moment, certainly his finest hour, or as he called it later – “one of the greatest days of my life.”

Soon after he had thanked his almighty with a bow, Samson’s teammates did the same to him, led by captain Suryakumar Yadav, who doffed his cap and bent his spine low before their post-match handshake. Captain Surya would later say that “great things come to those who wait”, and he was only the latest in line of Indian skippers to have made Samson, 31, wait and wait and wait for his opportunity to let his unquestionable talent shine on a stage like this. So much so that Samson had no hesitation in saying the following at the presentation: “I have only played maybe 60 games, but I’ve seen around 100 games (from the dugout) and I’ve seen how the greatest people have finished such games.”

Under the lights and scoreboard pressure of Kolkata, those learnings gleamed through, and how, given that his unbeaten 97 was the highest score by an Indian at the T20 World Cups in a successful chase (eclipsing Virat Kohli’s two unbeaten 82s in the past, against Australia in 2016 and Pakistan in 2021), while the chase itself was the highest India has successfully managed at the world event – 196 for victory. Opener Sanju was present for every run of it, having scored half of them without as much as playing a false shot, even as the other half was barely patched together for the loss of half the Indian side. Such was the pure greatness of an innings that deserved to reach three figures, couldn’t, yet, according to him, felt better than any of the six hundreds he had hit in the format for country or his IPL clubs.

Mainly due to the abundance of young talent in the Indian cricketing ecosystem (especially in the shortest format), Samson played only one game in India’s group stage, and that too due to Abhishek Sharma’s illness. But when the chips were down in the Super 8s, following the crushing defeat to South Africa – which made every match thereafter a do-or-die tie for India – the country turned to Samson. He made a stroke-filled 24 against Zimbabwe in a successful chase in Chennai (the city of his new IPL franchise), and carried that momentum into the big one in Kolkata. Having been put into bat, West Indies scored 195 runs on a tricky and sluggish wicket, which Sanju ostensibly also studied closely from his designated role of wicketkeeper. It showed when it was his turn to bat.

The first boundary was hit off his third ball, in the third over of the game, when he cracked left-arm spinner Akeal Hosein for a four past point. That area, square on the off side, would hold him in good stead right through his career-defining knock, filled with these carpet-hugging hits. But Hosein was in for more punishment in this over, with Sanju hoisting him for two of his four sixes on the night, shots that somehow seemed wholly shorn of malice or risk. That over ended with the wicket of Abhishek Sharma, and two overs later, the in-form Ishan Kishan had perished to Jason Holder, both blows making life so much easier for West Indies’s middle-overs champion, spinner Gudakesh Motie.

But, off the very first ball that Motie bowled, in the eighth over, Samson rocked back and flat-batted a boundary into the long-off fence. Just like that, the pressure vanished into thin air. That’s perhaps when the opposition realised that the man from Kerala was batting on a different wicket to the rest. To mix things up, the pace of Romario Shepherd was introduced, only for Samson to greet him with a six over long-off and a sizzling boundary drilled through the legs of the long-on fielder. These runs took him to a hit away from a first fifty at the World Cups, which Samson achieved with yet another cut to the off-side fence off Motie in the 10^th over. Milestone achieved, Samson crossed himself with a gloved finger for the first time that evening, not knowing then that the next time he would thank God, a cricket-crazed nation’s prayers would be answered as well.

For it is now safe to say that without Samson, India perhaps would not be in the semifinals of the home World Cup, given that the next best score to his 97 was Tilak Varma’s 27.

Brief scores: West Indies 195/4 in 20 overs (Roston Chase 40, Jason Holder 37 not out; Jasprit Bumrah 2/36) lost to India 199/5 in 19.2 overs (Sanju Samson 97 not out; Jason Holder 2/38) by five wickets