MUMBAI: Sanju Samson’s match-winning knock of 97 not out off just 50 balls against the West Indies at Eden Gardens in Kolkata, which helped India claim a five-wicket win in their last Super 8 clash on March 1 and enter the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup, left a man bursting with pride.
Even as he cheered Samson’s every fourth and sixth blast Sunday night at his home in Dubai, Zubin Bharucha felt uncomfortable as missiles were intercepted amid the escalating conflict in the Middle East.
“It’s all a bit strange. But hang in there,” Bharucha told TOI from Dubai, before quickly moving on to a long talk about Samson, one of his favorite pupils.
Bharucha, a former Mumbai cricketer turned coach, has known the 31-year-old wicketkeeper-batsman since he was 17 and has played an important role in his journey to becoming an IPL and international veteran. “It’s unreal that I’ve been training him for so long! He was a child when he first came to me!” exclaimed Bharucha.
Samson’s ability to bounce back after losing his place in the XI due to poor form says a lot about his mental strength.
By now, Bharucha knows Samson’s game and personality inside out. The veteran coach highlighted a rare quality reflected in his batting: a “sense of purity.”
“Resilience has been his hallmark. But what’s incredible about him is the person he is, which is what comes across in his batting. There’s a sense of purity to it. Almost spiritual in nature. He cares more about whether he’s taken care of the people in his church than his own careers or personal achievements, that’s who he is as a person and you can see it in the purity of his strokeplay. I know it’s a bit deep, but that’s how I see it,” Bharucha explained.
Ahead of the five-match T20I series against New Zealand last month, Samson invited Bharucha to Thiruvananthapuram for a four-day session.
Speaking about the approach during that period, he said: “The approach was to leave no stone unturned in terms of what you could expect to be thrown at you.”
Initial results were not encouraging: Samson managed just 46 runs in the five-match T20I series against New Zealand at 9.20 and was eventually dropped from the playing XI just before the T20 World Cup. However, in the crucial match against the West Indies, he rediscovered his touch.
Describing Romario Shepherd’s six deliveries in the final over, Bharucha said: “What we plan is for the hands to be in front of the stumps to attack the line of the stump and the outside balls outside the stump. And then wait for them to attack the inside and then it becomes a free hit. This image is of the six he hit in the last over. We want the bat to operate (swing as much as possible along the line of the stump) in front of the stump. For that to happen, you’ll need to do a back and forth motion. “It’s a similar move to what legends like Graeme Pollock used to do back in the day,” Bharucha explained.
Recalling Samson’s century against South Africa in Durban, he said: “He has played some extraordinary shots and innings within the IPL. Also his hundred on a fairly bouncy and tight pitch against SA when the next best score was thirty-something (Tilak Varma 33), which I thought was also an excellent innings. I think it was Jansen, (Gerald) Coetzee bowling fast and then (Keshav) Maharaj, (Aiden) Markaram. etc. I remember Abhishek (Sharma) got hit on the head by (Marco) Jansen. That was a classy tackle too.”
Bharucha called Samson the “skilled Brian Lara in terms of high backswing.”
“The reality is that when he scores runs it’s always going to be magical, because he has that special little gift of timing that very few have. It comes from his endless backlift that gives the impression of ease in stroke play, almost like a right-handed Lara in terms of high backswing.”
Turning philosophical again, he added: “It’s a learning threshold that you cross, and that can only happen in the middle. You can prepare as best as possible and that’s what we did, looking at all the possible aspects that could be presented to you. Different conditions, different pitches, different types of bowlers and sidearms. But eventually the best learning happens in the middle when you really put yourself in these positions from where you grow exponentially within a game.”
Not getting carried away, Bharucha concluded: “As I always tell the players, this is just the beginning, fingers crossed…”