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Former Pakistan wicketkeeper-batter Kamran Akmal has lashed out at Indian team management for sending Sanju Samson at no.6 in the run chase against West Indies in first T20I which the visitors lost by four runs. Akmal was baffled by the tactics as Samson bats up the order for Rajasthan Royals (RR) in Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023.
“When I talk about Sanju, does he play in IPL at no.6? He plays in top-4, give him a chance there. If Kohli and Rohit aren’t there, these batsmen should play higher in the order like 4 or 5. If you send him at 6, thinking he played aggressively in last ODI so he can do that again, it does not happen every time,” Akmal said on his YouTube channel.
Akmal felt that the coach Rahul Dravid and skipper Hardik Pandya did not take the run chase seriously and became overconfident.
“When India came for chase, I thought the captain, the coach, the management, they were all overconfident. It felt like they thought, ‘it’s a nothing total’. You have to plan. I didn’t see that. I saw experiments but you need planning with it,” he added.
In the run chase of 150, India lost their openers early and kept on losing wickets at regular intervals. Apart from debutant Tilak Varma who scored 39 runs from just 22 balls, no Indian batter looked comfortable. Despite the errors, India were in the game till the end but it was too tough an ask from Arshdeep Singh to pull off alone.
Samson scored 12 runs from 12 deliveries. He got run out by Kyle Mayers' direct hit trying to sneak a quick single. It will be interesting to see at which spot the 28-year-old comes out to bat in the second ODI which will be played on August 6 at Providence Stadium, Guyana.
So far, Samson has scored 313 runs from 17 innings at an average of 19.56 including one half-century. He has a strike rate of 132.06 in the format.
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