Colombo: It will be a challenging task for newly-appointed head coach of the Indian cricket team Gautam Gambhir to select between Rishabh Pant and Sanju Samson for the three T20 Internationals against Sri Lanka starting here on Saturday.
Except Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, who have retired from the shorter format, most of the players of the T20 World Cup winning team have come on the Sri Lanka tour and in such a situation it will not be easy to select one between Pant and Samson as both of them are aggressive wicketkeeper-batsmen.
Even though there are two vacant places in the Indian batting order, it will not be easy to field either of these two as a batsman. Pant scored 171 runs in the T20 World Cup while Samson did not get a chance to play a single match even though he was part of the team.
This series between India and Sri Lanka has become important for the Indian team because this is Gambhir’s first series as the head coach while the new captain of the team is Suryakumar Yadav. Looking at Gambhir’s past record, it is certain that his opinion will be given more importance in the team combination.
When Pant was out of the team after being injured in a car accident in December 2022, Ishan Kishan, Samson, Jitesh Sharma and Dhruv Jurel were tried as wicketkeeper-batsmen. If we look at the statistics of Pant and Samson, they look quite similar.
Samson has played 28 T20 Internationals so far in which he has scored runs at a strike rate of 133. He has played 27 of these matches after 2020 while he made his debut in this format in 2015. He himself admitted that his average of 21.14 is not up to his ability.
On the other hand, Pant has played 74 T20 international matches so far in which he has scored runs at a strike rate of 127. His average is 22.70. Which of these two to choose will largely depend on the thinking of the team management. As far as Rohit Sharma is concerned, he had full faith in Pant and this is the reason why despite being a part of the team during the T20 World Cup, there was no discussion about Samson.