First it was Suryakumar Yadav. Now, Sanju Samson gets the boot. Just four months after tasting T20 World Cup glory, Indian selectors are sweeping away the architects of that triumph. Chief selector Ajit Agarkar fronted the media to explain SKY’s demotion, but Samson’s erasure from the Shreyas Iyer-led squad bound for Zimbabwe was met with stone-cold silence. No explanations. Just a vanished name.
Not long ago, Samson was a national hero. He rescued India when the top order choked against spin. But selectors have long memories and short patience. Samson’s career is a pendulum of brilliant highs and baffling, low-scoring droughts. The IPL was a mixed bag. Subsequent international outings yielded little. Meanwhile, teenage prodigy Vaibhav Sooryavanshi was banging down the door, making it impossible for the suits in boardrooms to look away.
Team management wanted to shield Samson. They defended him publicly. But powerful powerbrokers in Indian cricket lost patience with the old guard. Why let a generational talent like Sooryavanshi rot on the bench? The logic was brutal. You do not teach a kid to swim by making him carry water bottles. You throw him into the deep end while he is hot.
Someone had to be sacrificed. The chopping block had three names: Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan, and Samson. The left-handers kept scoring. Samson did not. Consistency has always been his ghost. Dropping him sends a chilling message through the dressing room, but the selectors do not care about feelings. They wanted Sooryavanshi in. Samson was simply the easiest obstacle to remove.
Prabhsimran Singh’s call-up is the final nail. He is the designated safety net. If the young guns fail, Prabhsimran steps in, leaving Samson stranded in the wilderness. While other stars like Axar Patel and Arshdeep Singh are missing the Zimbabwe trip, they play multiple formats. Samson does not. He is a specialist who just lost his only job.
Behind the scenes, chaos reigns. The coaching staff might not even board the flight to Zimbabwe. The gap between the England ODIs and the African tour is ridiculously tight. Gautam Gambhir and his crew might sit this one out, leaving the B-team to be guided by development coaches.
Expect more turbulence. The Asian Games squad, announced just last month, is already being rewritten. The BCCI is quietly lobbying for late roster changes, exploiting loopholes to swap players who were not even on the original longlist. It is a cutthroat business, and Sanju Samson just learned that past glory buys you zero currency in the modern Indian setup.
