Sanju Samson's boom

India did not bowl well. Field well. Use their options well. Or bat well. All, except for Sanju Samson.

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There is almost a constant stream of disappointment around Sanju Samson. Fans seem to get behind him, then turn on him, then get behind again. People start looking towards other players. He’s too much about intent; they want more runs, more consistency. He never lived up to the early hype - which, of course, he had absolutely nothing to do with in the first place.

There are wicketkeepers everywhere in India. There are top-order players everywhere in India. And when Samson plays well, it’s boom or bust. Four ducks and three hundreds is ridiculous to say out loud.

The thing with Sanju Samson is that when it works, he is incredibly hard to game-plan against. He hits the ball where teams don’t put fielders. He did it over and over again today. The second-last ball went into the crowd; no one was out there. The last one was over long-on; no one was back. When Sanju Samson was done, so were the West Indies.

Sanju Samson was all boom today.

Former Australian captain Steve Waugh mentions in one of his many books that he remembered seeing West Indies captain Courtney Walsh’s T-shirt that said, “Form is temporary, class is permanent.” It stuck with him.

Clearly, Samson is not an all-time great like Walsh. But he is a very classy player.

You only need to watch the kind of bowlers he scores off, his IPL performances, and the occasional big scores for India that decimate sides. Anyone who understands batting knows that he has the technique, temperament and skill level.

What he doesn’t always have is form, especially for India. He is all runs or no runs.

Because of that, he hasn’t always had the backing that a player who goes as hard as he does probably needs. You can’t ask your players to score as quick as possible and then, at times, not expect a string of failures. That’s how it works.

But in Sanju Samson’s case, that’s kind of what they have done. So he has a low average and a high strike rate. And so instead of being coddled or looked after like some other slightly higher-profile players might be, he really hasn’t had the constant backing that you need if you’re going to play in that way.

In fact, I think when you look at Sanju Samson, you have to say that he’s been treated like a fringe player for a very long time.

Being on the edge of selection is hard for any cricketer. But it’s India, and there are so many other options; there’s a Rishabh Pant over there, and an Ishan Kishan, and a Dinesh Karthik somewhere behind you. And that’s just the wicketkeepers. We could do the same thing with top-order players. Yashasvi Jaiswal is not even at this T20 World Cup.

India have so many different options that it feels like every time Sanju Samson comes into the side, he and the selectors are both putting this incredible pressure on him to be good every single innings, and that’s just really unlikely.

That’s not at all how T20 cricket works for anyone, especially for someone who goes this hard. Someone who has a 150 career strike rate is going to have a lot of innings where they just don’t make any runs.

But even within all that, the recent treatment of Sanju Samson has been maddening, bizarre, bewildering at times. Remember, India brought Shubman Gill into the T20 side, despite the fact that he wasn’t even playing the style of cricket that they seemingly wanted. Perhaps it had something to do with a throwback to anchors, or maybe it was about him being a future captain in this format, but either way the actual victim of this was Sanju Samson.

And what’s more bizarre about that is they brought Shubman Gill into the side directly, and now he’s not even in the squad. That decision is just gone. That whole moment makes no sense. But the way it affected Sanju Samson is a little bit like what we’ve seen with Jonny Bairstow in Test cricket, where suddenly you’re being asked to do another role that you’re not used to.

In the Asia Cup, they made him bat down the order, despite the fact that it didn’t seem like he really had any idea how to do it. He tried, even at the lower level, to get some experience playing in that spot. He knew it was coming. It just doesn’t come naturally to him.

And so when Gill was gone, of course Sanju was back at the top, but surprise, surprise, he looked like he had lost touch. And I think that’s probably the wrong way of looking at it. He looked like he had lost confidence.