India batting coach Sitanshu Kotak has opened up on the thought process that led to the comeback of Sanju Samson in T20 World Cup 2026. The wicketkeeper-batter, who was dropped from the India Playing XI, made a return in the Super 8s stage and registered three match-winning fifties to win the Player of the Tournament and propelled the Men in Blue to a record third title.
Playing in just one group-stage match against Namibia as Abhishek Sharma was out due to illness, Sanju Samson was brought back into the side after India lost their first Super 8 game against South Africa. While he once again failed to get going against Zimbabwe, managing a score of 24(15 balls), he found backing from the management and repaid the faith with scores of 97*, 89, 89 against West Indies, England and New Zealand in the virtual quarterfinal, semifinal and final, respectively.
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Coming into the ICC event, Sanju has constantly faced competition for his spot. First it was Shubman Gill and then it was Ishan Kishan. In fact, Sanju Samson was not even the first-choice option to open the innings when the World Cup started.
However, the shift happened after teams started targeting and exploiting a specific weakness in the top order. With all left-handers in the top 3 in Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan and Tilak Varma, the opposition would try and bring in right-arm off spin to counter the attack. The move worked as Abhishek was dismissed five times out of his total eight dismissals to spinners, out of which three have been opposite right-arm off spinners.
Echoing in the same lines, Sitanshu Kotak told Cricbuzz,
“We realised that against off-spin we had three left-handers at the top because Tilak was batting at No. 3. But after a point there’s no point being stubborn.”
He added, “We had four games where we lost a wicket in the first over, and that was the moment when we started thinking differently. Sometimes you can also say it is God’s plan. In a way, it worked like that for us because it made us think that we had to utilise Sanju. Rinku was not getting many opportunities at No. 8. At the start we also needed to break that left-left-left combination. That is how Sanju came back into the picture.”
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