Mumbai: Sanju Samson did one man proud when he smashed a match-winning knock of 97 from just 50 balls against West Indies at Eden Gardens in Kolkata to help India register a five-wicket win and reach the T20 World Cup semi-finals in the last Super 8 match on March 1.
Zubin Bharucha cheered every four or six Samsons shot down at his home in Dubai on Sunday night, but remained uneasy as missiles were intercepted overhead amid an escalating conflict in the Middle East.
“It’s all a bit strange. But hang in there,” Bharucha told TOI in Dubai, before quickly launching into a tirade about Samson, one of his favorite guardians.
Bharucha, a former Mumbai cricketer turned coach, has known the 31-year-old wicketkeeper-batsman since he was 17 and played a major role in his emergence as an international player and IPL veteran. “I’ve been tutoring him for so long, it’s unreal! When he first came to me, he was just a kid!” Barucha exclaimed.
That Samson was able to bounce back after losing his starting spot due to poor form speaks volumes about his mental strength.
Now, Barucha knows all about Samson’s skills and personality. The veteran coach pointed to a rare quality in his batting – “purity”.
“Toughness has always been his hallmark. But what’s incredible about him as a person is that’s what you see reflected in his batting. He has a sense of purity. Almost spiritual in nature. He’s more concerned about whether he’s taking care of the people in the church than his own personal run or accomplishments, and that’s who he is as a person and you can see that in the purity of his batting. I know it’s a little esoteric, but that’s how I see it,” Barucha explained.
Ahead of the five-match T20I series against New Zealand last month, Bharucha was invited by Samson to travel to Thiruvananthapuram for a four-day training session.
“The focus was on leaving no stone unturned in whatever situations he might encounter,” he said of the focus during that period.
The initial results were not encouraging – Samson scored just 46 runs at 9.20 in the five-match T20I series against New Zealand and was eventually dropped from the starting XI on the eve of the T20 World Cup. However, he rediscovered his touch in the crucial match against West Indies.
Describing the six that Romario Sheppard hit in the final over, Barucha said, “The plan was to put both hands in front of the stumps and attack the stump line and the ball outside the stumps. Then wait for them to attack the inside and then it becomes a free ball. This picture is from him hitting the ball in the final over Sixes out. That is, we want the bat to operate in front of the stumps (swing as far as possible along the stump line), and to do that you need to do a back-and-forth motion, similar to what legends like Graeme Pollock did in the past,” explains Bharucha.
Recalling Samson’s century against South Africa in Durban, he said: “He was in the IPL Had some extraordinary shots and innings. Also he hit a hundred against South Africa on a pretty bouncy and seaming delivery when the next best was over thirty (Tilak Varma 33) which I thought was an outstanding innings as well. . I think it was Janson, (Gerard) Coetzee was bowling fast, and then (Keshav) Maharaj, (Ayden) Makkaram and so on. I remember Abhishek (Sharma) got hit on the head by (Marco) Janson and that was a high-level game as well.”
Barucha calls Samson “the right-hander’s Brian Lara in terms of high backswing.”
“The reality is, when he scores, it’s always magical because he has an extra special gift of timing that few people have. That comes from his endless backswing, which gives an impression of ease in stroke play, almost like a right-handed Laura in terms of a high backswing.”
He turned philosophical and added, “It’s a threshold of learning to cross, and that can only happen in the middle. One can prepare as much as possible, and that’s what we do, taking into account every possible aspect that he might encounter. Different conditions, different pitches, different types of bowlers and secondary arms. But ultimately the best learning happens in the middle, when you really put yourself in those positions, and from there you grow exponentially in a game.”
Far from getting carried away, Barucha concluded: “As I always tell the players, this is just the beginning, fingers crossed…”
