Indian team’s head coach Gautam Gambhir has expressed his views on dropping the dashing opener Sanju Samson for the explosive teen batting prodigy Vaibhav Sooryavanshi during the England tour.
Notably, Samson was axed from the XI for the second T20I on the England tour. While he made his comeback in the fifth and final T20I, he was removed from the squad for the subsequent three-match Zimbabwe tour.
Speaking to JioStar, Gambhir asserted that he couldn’t get proper sleep after leaving out Samson from the XI for Sooryavanshi, calling it the toughest decision he has taken during his coaching tenure in T20Is.
“In two years of my journey, that was the only night I could not sleep, and I told this to Sanju because I knew that it was probably the toughest decision in my coaching tenure in the T20 format, to leave out someone who was Player of the Tournament after only three or four games. The reason was probably that Vaibhav was in that kind of form as well, and we had to win the series,” Gambhir said on JioStar.
Further, Gambhir delved into the details of his conversation with Samson and how the latter responded to the decision. At just 15 years and 99 days old, Sooryavanshi made his T20I debut against England at Old Trafford on July 4.
“Because ultimately you are there and when you are playing for India, or when you are coaching India, you want to win each and every series possible. I had a very, very honest conversation with him and I told him that that is one of the reasons why, because Vaibhav was in that kind of form, and we needed someone to score runs at the top, we needed that little bit of a platform at the top as well. And he was fine with it. And that’s a conversation which me and Sanju had, and he took it in good spirits,” he concluded.
