It was strange to see Sanju Samson was once again benched as India announced their playing XI for the 2nd ODI against New Zealand on Sunday.
Samson warmed the bench for the entire T20I series and expectations were high when the right-handed batter was included in the playing XI for the opening ODI, scoring 36 off 38.
However, in another bizarre decision, VVS Laxman and co. decided to drop Sanju and have replaced him with Deepak Hooda.
Now interestingly, Pant has blown hot and cold and has looked nervous as of late, but the axe falls on Samson, who hasn’t done anything wrong with the bat in hand.
Here, it must be noted that Samson was a part of the Indian squad for their tour of Ireland and England, where he was subsequently dropped, and wasn’t picked up in India’s T20I World Cup squad.
As far as the ODI is concerned, New Zealand won the toss and Williamson elected to bowl first. At the time of writing, India are 22/0, as rain god arrives to spoil the play.
At the end of the second game, which was abandoned due to rain after just 12.5 overs of play, Dhawan revealed the reason behind dropping Samson.
Despite a decent knock in the opening match of the ODI series on Friday in Auckland, Sanju Samson was dropped from the playing XI for the second game.
The decision left fans on Twitter fuming at captain Shikhar Dhawan and head coach VVS Laxman as India made way for Deepak Hooda in his stead.
At the end of the second game, which was abandoned due to rain after just 12.5 overs of play, Dhawan revealed the reason behind dropping Samson.
Yet Samson was dropped. And while Dhawan did not reveal the reason after losing the toss, he explained why Samson had to be dropped.
“We wanted the sixth bowler to come in, so Sanju Samson missed out and Hooda came in. And Chahar was picked because he can swing the ball really well. A few of our guys are resting but this side is still strong, shows the depth of our squad,” Dhawan explained.
Samson was benched through the entire T20I series with Hardik Pandya considering it an “unfortunate” case and explaining the reason to be “strategic”. But Samson was picked for the Auckland ODI where he scored a 38-ball 36 while also stitching a 96-run stand alongside Shreyas Iyer.
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