A lion-hearted batting effort from the newly appointed skipper of the Rajasthan Royals, Sanju Samson, was such an impactful performance that despite being on the losing side, the Man-of-the-match award was given to him. In the end the Royals lost by just four runs as they were one big hit away from victory.

In T20 cricket it is believed that no loss is respectful, irrespective of its margin. But today’s carnage by Sanju that carried the hopes of RR deserves the respect for it’s valour. He was not connecting the deliveries to his best potential in the first half of his innings and in fact, at one stage the keeper-batsman was going at 41 in 30 deliveries. Since the responsibility of being the captain was also to be fulfilled, he knew that he had to save his wicket till the end to see his side through.

After spending some time in the middle, the breakthrough for Samson arrived in the 11th over when he fetched 14 runs off Meredith’s second spell and after that he looked like he was untouchable, as if he was never struggling to catch up with the run-chase.

Therefore, the knock that Sanju played will be a huge learning curve for him on how to build an innings and not necessarily playing a rash shot after timing a few breath-taking sixes to perfection – somewhere he has been caught wanting in Indian colours.

Yes, his side did not win the game and a few of his catches were dropped but the guile that was on display by the kerala batsman to be accountable for his actions and taking it upon himself to win the game for his side was way more impressive than his inability to clear the boundary on the final ball by just a few metres. The attitude and the approach shown by Sanju was something that we had never seen in any of his innings whether it was with the national side or his franchise in the IPL.

Image courtesy : IPL/ Twitter

However, the instinctive batting does come naturally to him. He was the player who struck the second most number of sixes in the 2020 edition of the IPL ( 26 sixes) and as he says that scoring runs is something that he does not do, it just happens to him in a recent interview with Cricinfo.

In the same interview, he also mentioned the fact that he does not feel the need to carry the responsibility of being captain while he is batting because he wants to bat well to make the team win, irrespective of him being the captain or not. In contrast to what we said, as explained above on how these might just be the early signs of him benefitting from the responsibility of being captain. Another incident also proved that he was aware of his duties.

With two balls remaining and five runs to get, Samson denied himself a single as he would have been off-strike and Morris would inevitably face the final delivery with five runs to get. This act of Sanju directly tells you about the result that he wanted in his team’s favour. A possible six at the end would have justified his decision as the leader of the team to not take the single. But what happened on that delivery was a different story alltogether.

We can only hope that Sanju goes from strength to strength, especially with the responsibility of the RR captaincy on his shoulders, and be a regular member of the national side in the upcoming months which also entails the T20 world cup.