The clock is ticking for the aesthetically pleasing Sanju Samson Premium

Sanju Samson's international career at a crossroads despite immense talent, needing consistency to fulfill potential in cricket.

At his absolute best, Sanju Samson is a sight for the gods. Tall and upright, and blessed with an elegance that only comes to a select few, he makes batting look the easiest proposition in the world. The hallmark of top-class batters, they say, is the ability to pick the length early and play the ball late. Samson is as felicitous as they come, easy on the eye and making the best of bowlers appear commonplace.

So far so good. Samson, however, hasn’t been at his absolute best for sustained periods of time which is why, two months shy of his 30th birthday, his international career is still at a crossroads, as it has been for several years now.

Samson was only 20 when he first played for the country, in a Twenty20 International against Zimbabwe in Harare in July 2015.

In the subsequent nine years, he has only made 30 T20I appearances; his One-Day International career didn’t take off until July 2021, and he has 16 ODI caps. These aren’t perhaps the numbers a batter of his immense skill sets deserve, but Samson is a victim as much of the profusion of riches India can summon as his own fallibilities which haven’t allowed him to average more than 19.30 at a strike-rate of 131.36 in his T20I career.

His ODI record is far more inspiring, suggesting that he deserves a longer run in the longer white-ball format. Fourteen innings have yielded 510 runs at 56.66, and a strike-rate of 99.60 is in keeping with the demands on a middle-over batter in an era where 300 is no longer the exception.

But Samson has made his name as a T20 destroyer, a legacy of his dominant performances for Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League where he has hit numerous peaks and sent some of the greatest performers of the past into raptures with his silken touch and his delectable placement, which is why it is hard to reconcile to his modest performances for the country.

Samson’s supporters – and there are millions of them – will point to the fact that he has seldom got the bouquet of chances that those that are less gifted than him, they will argue, have been bestowed with. That argument won’t be without justification; but the corollary to that is that in the chances that have come his way, he may not have done enough to convince the decision-makers that he deserves a longer rope.