'Most Bizarre Selection.' Samson Got Dropped Three Games After Winning Player Of The Tournament.

Here is the timeline, because the timeline is the argument. June 14, 2026: Sanju Samson walks off the Ahmedabad pitch after India's T20 World Cup final victory over New Zealand, holding the Player of the Tournament trophy. 321 runs. Average of 80.25. Strike rate of 199.37. Twenty-four sixes — the most by any Indian in a single World Cup edition. He had just become only the third Indian to win the award, after Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah.

July 4, 2026: Samson sits on the bench at Old Trafford as 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi opens in his place. The gap between coronation and exile? Twenty days and three bad innings.

Indian cricket has a short memory. But this is something else entirely.

Manjrekar's frustration isn't just about loyalty to a match-winner. It's about basic selection logic. If you want Sooryavanshi in the side — and everyone wanted Sooryavanshi in the side — you don't have to drop your World Cup hero to do it. You bat Samson at No. 3. You move Shreyas Iyer down one slot. You find a way, because finding a way for the man who just won you a global trophy is the bare minimum of competent team management.

Instead, India's think tank chose the nuclear option: bin the Player of the Tournament outright. Not demote him. Not rest him with an arm around the shoulder. Drop him. After three innings of 5, 0, and 1 against Ireland and England — a sample size so small it wouldn't survive peer review in a statistics undergraduate class.

This isn't the first time India has done this to Samson. It's not even the second. Manjrekar himself pointed out in March that "serious blunders" had been committed with Samson's career — specifically that after the keeper-batter smashed three T20I centuries in five innings against South Africa, he was shunted down the order just four or five innings later because Shubman Gill had a good Test series in England.

Drop. Recall. Perform. Drop. It's a cycle that would have broken most players years ago. Samson has spoken about it — he called being left out of India's XI during a bilateral series at home against New Zealand "absolutely broken" — and yet he keeps coming back and performing when it matters most.

The T20 World Cup 2026 wasn't just good form. It was one of the great individual tournament performances in the format's history. An unbeaten 97 off 50 balls against the West Indies in a virtual quarter-final at Eden Gardens. Half-centuries in the semi-final and final. The Player of the Match in two consecutive knockout games. This is what Indian cricket chose to reward with three innings of patience before pulling the plug.

A video from Old Trafford showed Gautam Gambhir having an animated on-field conversation with Samson before the 2nd T20I. Reports described it as the head coach "consoling" the dropped player, making him understand "this was not the end of the road."

But here's the thing: if you have to console a player for being dropped, maybe the drop was the wrong call. Consolation is what you offer after a death in the family, not after a selection decision you yourself made. The optics were terrible — the coach who presided over an 0-2 whitewash to Ireland weeks earlier now explaining to the Player of the Tournament why he's been benched.

Assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate and bowling coach Morne Morkel both clarified that Samson "played a key role in India's T20 World Cup triumph and deserved more chances." Which raises the obvious question: if the coaching staff believes he deserved more chances, who exactly made the call to drop him after three?

Nothing in this argument is anti-Sooryavanshi. The kid is 15, hit two sixes off Jofra Archer on debut, and has 776 IPL runs at a strike rate of 224 to his name. He belongs in this team. Nobody is disputing that.

What Manjrekar and Rayudu are disputing — and they're right — is the method. You don't introduce a generational talent by discarding another one. You don't reward the man who carried your World Cup campaign with a three-innings audition and a seat in the stands. And you certainly don't do it when the obvious alternative — batting Samson at No. 3, a position he's perfectly capable of filling — was sitting there like an open book that nobody in the team management bothered to read.

The 3rd T20I is at Trent Bridge on July 7. England lead the series 1-0. India have decisions to make, and the biggest one has nothing to do with bowling combinations or powerplay tactics.

Does Samson come back? If he does, does Sooryavanshi drop out after a debut that was globally televised and internationally celebrated? If Samson stays on the bench, does the message to every future World Cup performer become: your shelf life is three bad innings, no exceptions?

Manjrekar called it the most bizarre selection. Rayudu asked people to spare a thought. Gambhir offered consolation on a field where Samson should have been batting. Somewhere in all of this, a 31-year-old man who dragged India to a World Cup with his bare hands is sitting in a dressing room, wondering if 321 runs at 199.37 buys you anything more than twenty days of goodwill.

Indian cricket doesn't have a selection problem. It has a gratitude problem. And Sanju Samson keeps paying the price.