Gautam Gambhir’s Bold Promise to Sanju Samson Helped Him Recover from the Twin Duck Trauma

Sanju Samson explicitly explained how important Gautam Gambhir's backing was in him getting to his best form at the right time in his career.

Gautam Gambhir’s Bold Promise to Sanju Samson Helped Him Recover from the Twin Duck Trauma

Gautam Gambhir and Sanju Samson (via India Today)

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Indian cricket team’s current coach, Gautam Gambhir, is famously known for backing players he believes in. There have been multiple instances of players who have played under him coming out and praising Gambhir for this quality of his.

Most say that he makes them feel free and safe within the team environment. One such successful product of Gautam Gambhir‘s coaching tenure is Sanju Samson. Samson had been in the talks for a consistent Indian team appearance for long.

However, with a lot of inconsistent selection and some ordinary performances, the batter couldn’t cement his spot. This, however, changed after Gambhir took over. His coaching journey has seen the batter flourish in the T20I format and now has become a constant in the playing XI.

This trust in the coach, however, didn’t build overnight. It had its own past that Sanju Samson vividly described on Ravichandran Ashwin‘s YouTube channel.

Samson narrated the story from a Sri Lankan tour he was part of. He explicitly explained how important Gautam Gambhir’s backing was in him getting to his best form at the right time in his career. Despite getting out for two consecutive ducks, Gambhir believed in his potential.

I played 2 games in Sri Lanka & I got duck in two games – I was bit down, that’s when Gauti bhai saw me, he came up to me and asked what happened – I told him that I didn’t capitalise on the chances I got – and he was like ‘So? I will remove you from the team only if you scored 21 ducks’ – that kind of confidence from Captain & coach helped me to do what I did later on.

Sanju Samson said

This confidence has now brought about some excellent knocks from the Kerela batter. Samson has scored three T20I hundreds under Gambhir and has bettered his strike rate to 152.39. His consistent run makes him an exciting prospect for the upcoming T20 World Cup at home. He will truly stand true on Gambhir’s expectations if he has a standout tournament.

India’s T20I record under Gautam Gambhir

The Indian Test team may be a little fragile when it comes to results under Gautam Gambhir, however, on the flip side, India’s T20I team has no such issues. Gambhir in his short stint so far has maintained an impeccable record in the shortest format of cricket.

Suryakumar Yadav and Gautam Gambhir in Indian training wear
Suryakumar Yadav and Gautam Gambhir (via Mint)

India hasn’t lost a single T20I series under Gambhir. In total, India has just lost two games out of the 15 they have played since he took up the Indian team. They started off with an incredible 2-0 win against Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka.

They backed it up with a thundering home performance against Bangladesh. Further, they went to South Africa and beat the home team 3-1 rather comfortably with a plethora of individual hundreds. In their most recent series, India beat England at home 4-1 without breaking much sweat.

Under Gambhir, India has created a very healthy pool of exciting cricketers, out of which most have come from the Indian Premier League. There has been a resurgence of players like Sanju Samson and Hardik Pandya. New players like Arshdeep Singh, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakravarthy and Yashasvi Jaiswal seem to have locked their numbers in the team as well.

Despite doing well in the bilateral series, Gambhir would be well aware that he will be entering his first multinational tournament, Asia Cup, in a month’s time. That will potentially be Gambhir’s highest pressure game in T20I cricket when India will take on Pakistan.

Winning the Asia Cup will be an important assignment as it will give a good practice to the team for the upcoming T20 World Cup, which India will enter as favorites in. The Gambhir T20I era is picking up speed and wouldn’t want to stop anytime soon with greater challenges coming up.

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