T20 World Cup: How Samson proved his doubters wrong in must-win battle

An event of the magnitude of ICC World Cup at home can be both a blessing and a curse — ask a Rohit Sharma or Harmanpreet Kaur. If the ‘Hitman’ saw it slip between his fingers after his team’s stellar unbeaten run in the 2023 ICC World Cup, Harmanpreet and her girls managed to exorcise the ghosts of many a heartbreak in Navi Mumbai last year.

Suryakumar Yadav and his men also learnt the perils of pressure the hard way, certainly being far from their best but still managing to keep their date with the semi-finals in a tense, make-or-break encounter against the West Indies at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata. Chasing a record target of 196 for a win, albeit with liberal help from dew, the Men in Blue found an unlikely hero in the much-maligned Sanju Samson.

The 31-year-old Malayali, who has time and again flattered to deceive in his career spanning over a decade, may have scored eye-catching centuries in the bilaterals in this format, but the match-winning, unbeaten 97 (12 fours and four sixes) on Sunday night under immense pressure was worth its weight in pure gold. After young turks Abhishek Sharma and Ishan Kishan fell cheaply, Samson got into the act and reached his 50 in just 26 balls forcing his captain to often play the second fiddle.   

The West Indies mantra was certainly to be pace-off against the free-stroking Indian batters, with seamers Jason Holder or Matthew Forde also refusing to go full tilt. However, the canny Surya, along with Samson, absorbed the initial pressure as any more wickets at that juncture could have caused a collapse like the one against the Proteas.

The suspense over the semi-final line-up got over on the final day of the group league matches after endless debate on pre-fixed seedings, run-rates and venues. While the defending champions will now take on England for the third time in a row in a World T20 semi-final in Mumbai on Thursday (5 March), runners-up South Africa take on New Zealand in the first round of four clash in Kolkata the previous day (4 March).   

The Caribbean approach to their innings building was quite a revelation by itself, though one felt they were 20-25 runs short under the circumstances. When skipper Shai Hope and Roston Chase were unseparated after the powerplay at 45, the chatter was whether they missed a trick in not accelerating things. However, it seemed to be their new thinking whereby the top batters would take the game deep without losing too many wickets and then leave it to their power hitters to give it a final push.

It’s precisely what happened when despite losing a cluster of wickets between the 12th and 15th over mark, they were still unflustered. The last five overs saw them put together 70 runs as gentle giant Jason Holder and Rovman Powell cobbled up an unbeaten 76-run partnership, during which they negotiated an on-the-mark Jasprit Bumrah rather well.

The more one sees Bumrah, the more one silently doffs his hat to his growing mastery over his craft. It’s been quite sometime that the think tank spared him new-ball duty in this format by starting with Arshdeep Singh and the economical Hardik Pandya, using him for spells of one over twice and then two overs for the 18th and 20th overs.

The same routine worked when Suryakumar Yadav brought him back in the 12th over as Varun Chakravarthy was going for runs, and ‘Boom Boom’ immediately responded with the wickets of the dangerous Shimron Hetmyer and Chase in one over.