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Just to keep Shreyas Iyer out of contention for the India T20 captaincy, head coach Gautam Gambhir backed Sanju Samson as his preferred leadership candidate. However, now that the captaincy battle is over, Sanju has become a non-entity in Gambhir’s plans, sources told CricBlogger.
Sources said that the moment Gautam Gambhir received instructions from the BCCI to include Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and give him all the matches in the England series, he decided to leave Sanju Samson out of the playing XI. With Sanju being the only established member of India’s T20 side to miss out on the Zimbabwe series, it appears Gambhir may have all but shut the door on his comeback if Sooryavanshi continues to fire on all cylinders, as he did in the IPL, sources added.
In a way, Gambhir was backing Sanju as much as it was serving the purpose of his team. Now that Sooryavanshi has been given green signal to open the innings in T20, Sanju may find it tough to stage a comeback. Also, Sanju’s inconsistency didn’t help his cause much and the fact that India lost the T20 series to Ireland, the team needed a scapegoat and it was Sanju who is paying the price and nothing else.
Sanju could also become the second player after Suryakumar Yadav to be axed from India’s T20 World Cup-winning side. India won the last two T20 World Cups with two distinctly different sets of players, with the core group from the 2024 triumph almost entirely different from the one that lifted the 2026 title.
Whether such constant churn is beneficial for Indian cricket will only become clear over the long term. However, such uncertainty can create an environment where players begin to focus more on securing their own place rather than playing freely for the team, knowing that their future could be judged on the basis of every single performance.
