Sanju Samson's technical weaknesses against express pace along with Rinku Singh's dip in form and fitness issues will be a concern for India when they take on a resurgent England in the fourth T20 International in Pune on Friday. (Full Coverage | More Cricket News)
Having fluffed their chances in the third T20I in Rajkot, the penultimate game of the five-match series gives the hosts ano🔜ther opportunity to seal the series going into the final game in Mumbai on February 2. Suryakumar Yadav's men won the first two games in Kolkata and Chennai.
Samson, the maverick keeper-batter from Kerala, whose sympathetic and loyal fan base never fails to remind everyone of the limited chances he has got, started the ཧT20I season with three hundreds against Bangladesh and South Africa prior to the ongoing series.
In the🥂 current rubber, he has had scores of 26, 5 and 3 and it is not these numbers that are concerning. In T20 cricket, if one factors in risk, there would always be lot of less profitable days at the office considering the kind of strokes batters play these days.
But in case of Samson, w♛hat is of concern is his palpable discomfort against anything bowl🍷ed above 145 clicks.
Against Bangladesh at home, he faced Taskin Ahmed, Tanzim Hasan Shakib while in South Africa Andile Simelane a♑nd Lutho Sipamla were among the ♒bowlers.
These are not exactly 🙈intimidating fast bowlers and he rightfully took them to the cleaners. These are bowlers who fire in between 130 to 140 clicks and can be hit through the line on flat deಞcks.
However, Jofra Archer and Mark Wood are different beasts, bowling between 145 kmph to 155 kmღph and that pac♒e is creating problems for Samson.
During all three games, the Kerala batter couldn't even get his bat down a💃s deliveries would thud into𝔍 Phil Salt's gloves.
The🌜 hard lengths and steep bounce are creating a problem and even on batting shirt-fronts, it is not easy to hit through the line if one doesn't🐎 have proper technique or doesn't regularly face this quality of fast bowling.
Samson is one of head ▨coach Gautam Gambhir's favourites and it is expected that he would be persisted with going into next year𒊎's T20 World Cup.
But his technical issu📖es need to be sorted out at the earliest by Gambhir, new batting coach Sitanshu Kota🌠k and the himself.
Dhruv Jurel looks a misfit
Rinku Singh's back spasms forced the team management to try Dhruv Jur𒁏el in the No.7 position but he has looked out of place in this particular format unlike Test cricket.
Rinku played the first game and was rested in the next two games but assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate decla🔯red the batter fit for Friday's contest in the pre-match press conference.
But even Rinkuಞ, after a glorious start to his T20I career, has gone♐ off the rails.
When Gambhir became Kolkata Knikght Riders mentor, Rinku got𒁏 to play a total of 70 odd balls in the 2024 IPL. As a result, he couldn't make it to the T20 World Cup as Shivam Dube, with his bowling ability, was considered better in the Americas.
The Indian middle order hasn't exactly played England spinner Adil Rashid well so far and with Dube b🦂ack in the mix, will Gambhir take a chance with him?
Lo🍸oﷺks unlikely as given the pace of England speedsters even the burly Mumbaikar would be ill at ease.
The third option is Ramandeep Singh, who also looks exciting as a finisher and is a better seamer than Dube. But even he ꦫis untested aga༺inst quality pace attack.
Will Arshdeep be back in order to seal the series
Mohammed Shami needs a lot of bowling in𒉰 matchꩲ situations and the Rajkot game was a decent restart to his international career without being spectacular.
While a bilater🐼al series win counts for little, Gambhir wouldn't like the ignominy of being the first coach under whom India lost a home T20I series against England.
Hence, it would be interesting if Arshdeep Singh, I🌌ndia's best T20I bowler in ab🏅sence of Jasprit Bumrah is in line to come back and give some breakthroughs in the Powerplay overs.
Teams (from):
India: Suryakumar Yadav (captain), Aꦬbhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson (wk), Tilak Varma, Axar Patel, Hardik Pandya, Washington Sundar, Varun Chakravarthy, Ravi Bishnoi, Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Shami, 🔯Dhruv Jurel (wk), Rinku Singh, Shivam Dube, Ramandeep Singh, Harshit Rana.
England: Jos Buttler (captain), Phil Salt (wk), Ben Duckett, Harry Brook, Liam Livingstone, Jamie Smith (wk), Adil Rashid, Brydon Carse, Jamie Overton, Gus Atkinson, Rehan Ahmed, Jofra Archer, Mark Wood, Jacob Bethell, Saqib Mahꦛmood.
Match Starts at 7 pm IST.
