Srikkanth Asked the Question India's Selectors Can't Answer: Why Not Samson?

There is a version of this story where you can defend India's selectors. Where the data supports the decision, where the form guide says yes, where the vision for the future justifies the present. This is not that version.

Abhishek Sharma opened the batting in all three T20Is against Zimbabwe in Harare. He scored 1 off 8 balls, 8 off 8 balls, and 2 off 4 balls. Blessing Muzarabani dismissed him in all three innings. Three matches, 11 runs, 20 balls, zero boundaries. The ICC's No. 2-ranked T20I batter looked like a man who'd forgotten how to bat.

Meanwhile, 6,500 kilometres away, Sanju Samson — the player who won India the T20 World Cup three months ago — was presumably doing what rested players do: wondering what he did wrong.

Let's put the two CVs side by side, because the contrast is genuinely absurd.

Sanju Samson at the T20 World Cup 2026: 321 runs in 5 innings, average 80.25, strike rate 199.38. He scored 97 not out against West Indies in the quarter-final, 89 off 42 against England in the semi-final, and 89 off 46 in the final against New Zealand. He hit 24 sixes — the most by any Indian in a single T20 World Cup. He was named Player of the Tournament. He was, by every measurable metric, the best batter in the competition.

Abhishek Sharma at the same tournament: three consecutive ducks in the group stage against the USA, Pakistan, and the Netherlands. He was ill, he missed a game, he came back and couldn't buy a run. Then he produced a match-defining 52 off 21 balls in the final — a knock that saved his place and, arguably, won India the trophy. But outside that one innings, his tournament was 89 runs from 7 other innings at an average of 12.71.

One player carried India through every knockout. The other was carried by one knockout innings. Guess which one was dropped.

Srikkanth isn't saying Abhishek Sharma is finished. He's asking a simpler, sharper question: if you're going to give one player nine post-World Cup innings to find form despite seven failures, why did you send another player home after he won you the trophy?

The former India captain didn't stop at the selection double standard, either. He went after the batting approach itself.

The BCCI's official line was that Samson was 'rested' for Zimbabwe to give Prabhsimran Singh an opportunity. ESPNcricinfo reported as much. On paper, it's a rotation policy for a low-stakes bilateral against a team India were always going to beat.

But here's the problem with that framing: you don't rest your best player from a series where your second-best opener is averaging 4.6. You don't give a man 321 World Cup runs and then tell him his services aren't required in Harare while the guy who replaces him can't middle a ball against Blessing Muzarabani.

Samson has been in this cycle before. Dropped after the England T20Is earlier this year — a series India lost 0-4 — despite being the only batter who looked like he belonged. At some point, 'rotation' stops being rotation and starts being something else entirely. Srikkanth sees it. Every cricket fan with a working pair of eyes sees it. The selectors, apparently, do not.

What makes this so frustrating is that Abhishek Sharma is clearly talented. His IPL 2026 season for Sunrisers Hyderabad produced a 135 off 57 balls that broke records. He's capable of brutal, match-winning violence with the bat. When he connects, he's one of the most destructive openers in world cricket.

But T20I cricket in 2026 has exposed a pattern: 15 of his 23 innings this year have finished under 20. Six ducks. He's either smashing it to all parts or walking back before the field spreads. The feast-or-famine ratio has tilted so far toward famine that his ICC ranking — still No. 2 in the world — looks like a statistical ghost from a different era. Ishan Kishan has already overtaken him at the top.

Srikkanth's advice is sound: slow down, play at 100 for a few balls, build an innings, then accelerate. But that requires a fundamental shift in approach from a player whose entire game is built on walking out and swinging from ball one. At what point does potential stop outweighing output?

India's next T20I assignment is against Sri Lanka in August, and the squad announcement will be the first real test of whether Srikkanth's question lands where it needs to. If Abhishek opens in Colombo with Samson watching from home again, we'll know the answer isn't about form, rotation, or opportunity. It'll be about something the selectors would rather not name.

Kris Srikkanth didn't invent this debate. He just said the quiet part out loud. And when a man who opened the batting in a World Cup final — a man who knows what it takes to be backed by selectors and what it feels like to be discarded by them — asks 'why not Samson?', the question deserves better than silence.