At the Eden Gardens in Kolkata, Sanju Samson tonked a 50-ball 97 in a virtual knockout game against West Indies. England bore the brunt of his return to form in the semi-final and New Zealand watched balls fly in the summit clash as he signed off with 89 (42) and 89 (46).
“More than the courage, it was a tactical change,” Gambhir said of the decision to include Samson for the last three games of the T20 World Cup 2026 ahead of Rinku Singh. “More importantly, I don’t think so me and the captain ever felt that Sanju was out of form. We always felt that after the New Zealand series that he needed a break. Sometimes it’s good as a leadership group to give someone a break as well. Because you want to go off the pressure, and then you want to just clean up your head and all that stuff and then come back.
“Obviously, we had the luxury of playing different combinations as well. And that is the depth of that squad. We had Rinku batting at that number, and then we felt that probably we needed to break that three left-handers at the top; not from a point of view where we felt that off spinner was an issue. Trust me. It was never a discussion that off spinner is going to create a lot of problem for our two left-handers at the top. We just felt that probably can we have someone with Sanju’s ability and with that power at the top, and we can have three explosive guys at one, two and three. That was the reason. I don’t think it was courage, it was tactical.
“More importantly, the talent that we know that Sanju had and we knew that the way he was batting in the nets, there was no doubt that he’s going to come in and deliver it for us. And how well has he delivered for us? I don’t think I remember someone coming back and scoring that consistently in all the three games, or probably all the four games.
“I felt we are very blessed as a team and as a coach and captain for the amount of depth we have in that dressing room. Because we could have played three, four, five combinations. We could have played two wrist spinners. We could have played batsmen till number 8 – we could have had different combinations at the top. We had three openers who could bat any time at the top. So I felt that it was never about being courageous. It is also about being tactical.”
