Sanju Samson grabbed the Player of the Tournament award after India’s victorious ICC T20 World Cup campaign on Sunday, then lifted the lid on a quieter influence behind the fireworks. The wicketkeeper-batter pointed straight at Sachin Tendulkar, whose steady counsel helped drag Samson out of a career slump.
Samson did not stumble into the tournament full of swagger. He entered it bruised by months of doubt. The 31-year-old revealed he kept “constant touch” with Tendulkar in the weeks leading up to the competition. That line matters because Samson spent part of the build-up parked outside the playing XI, watching matches from the sidelines and wrestling with his own mindset.
“When I sat outside in Australia and didn’t play,” he explained, “I started thinking about what mindset I needed.” The sentence sounded simple, yet it framed the turning point.
Samson reached out to Tendulkar directly. The pair exchanged long conversations about clarity, preparation and game awareness, the sort of granular detail great batters obsess over.
Even on the eve of a decisive match, Tendulkar checked in again. “He called yesterday to see how I felt,” Samson revealed, clearly still absorbing the gesture.
Those discussions arrived at exactly the right moment because Samson’s form had collapsed earlier in the year. During the T20I series against New Zealand, he scraped together just 46 runs across five innings.
Selectors reacted quickly. They pushed Ishan Kishan into the wicketkeeper-batter slot and shoved Samson back toward the bench.
The slump did more than damage numbers. It rattled the player himself. “Right after the New Zealand series, I was broken,” Samson admitted, using a phrase that captured the mental wreckage. He described a period when confidence vanished and doubts flooded every corner of his thinking.
At one point he wondered whether the big stage might never reopen. Yet cricket careers rarely follow neat scripts.
Samson suddenly returned during the Super Eight stage of the World Cup. India needed wins; Samson delivered them.
A blistering sequence followed: 97 not out, then 89, then another 89. Bowlers tried pace, spin, wide yorkers and slower balls; Samson smashed the lot with a strike rate brushing 200.
Five matches produced 321 runs. That surge transformed him from fringe selection debate into the tournament’s dominant batter.
He insists the groundwork started long before those innings. Samson pointed back to the 2024 World Cup in the Caribbean, where he travelled with India’s squad but never played a match.
Instead of sulking, he used the experience as rehearsal. “I kept dreaming, visualising and working,” he said, outlining the quiet grind behind the eventual breakout.
That preparation paid off when opportunity finally knocked. Samson did not creep back into the side; he stormed through the door and seized the tournament.
India’s batting unit suddenly looked deeper, sharper and far more dangerous with him in the middle order. Opponents tried to squeeze him with spin in the middle overs, yet Samson repeatedly opened his stance and carved gaps square of the wicket.
He now admits the scale of the moment still spins in his head. “It feels surreal,” he said, sounding like a man who still expects someone to tap his shoulder and wake him up.
