India head coach Gautam Gambhir has revealed that leaving out Sanju Samson for teenaged batting sensation Vaibhav Suryavanshi during the T20I series in England left him awake all night, adding that it was the toughest decision he had to make in his coaching tenure in the shortest format. India had to drop Samson, the Player of the Tournament in this year’s T20 World Cup triumph, after the first T20I of the five-match series in England in July, which the visitors lost. He was replaced by Suryavanshi, who made his T20I debut in Manchester.
Samson returned to the playing XI at the expense of Suryavanshi in the 3-0 series win over Afghanistan, including hitting consecutive fifties.
And the reason was probably that Vaibhav was in that kind of form as well, and we had to win the series. And he was fine with it. “There’s one more thing – social media or outside noise doesn’t decide the playing XI.
Because i knew that it was probably the toughest decision in my coaching tenure in the T20 format because someone who was Player of the Tournament, and then you have to leave him out after three or four games, “In two years of my journey, that was the only night I could not sleep and I told this to Sanju. “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. 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, i had a very, very honest conversation with him and I told him that that is one of the reasons why,. Because if Vaibhav plays today, then it’s going to be a tough conversation between me and whoever we leave out, whether it’s Abhishek or Sanju, the playing XI is decided by who, in that dressing room, the coach and captain feel can win us the match, what is the best playing XI, and who have done well for such a long time.
And that’s a conversation which me and Sanju had, and he took it in good spirits,” said Gambhir to JioStar ahead of the start of India’s home season comprising three ODIs and five T20Is against the West Indies.
Gambhir signed off by asserting that short-term stumbles should not trigger knee-jerk reactions in India’s T20I set-up. “For two years, imagine, we won the World Cup. “He was so flexible that he was okay if someone went ahead of him and it happens very rarely that a captain, who is probably your main batter as well, sacrifices his position for the team’s cause, whether for someone else’s impact or from a left-hand, right-hand combination point of view, he is willing to sacrifice his position. Which team in the history of sport has gone undefeated from one World Cup to the other and gone on to win the World Cup? Suddenly one bad series or three bad games here and there does not make them a bad player or does not make us a bad side. So it was very important for us to have that continuity.”
“It didn’t take these guys 17 years to win the second World Cup. It took these guys only 17 months to win the third World Cup.
