Why always Sanju Samson?

India’s decision to replace Sanju Samson with Vaibhav Sooryavanshi did not land as a routine team change. It landed with the weight of a familiar question. Why always Sanju? Why does the axe so often seem to find him first? Why does a player with such obvious gifts, such clean ball-striking and such rare match-winning ability still live one bad week away from another selection debate? The answer is uncomfortable because it is not as simple as injustice. Samson has never been an ordinary T20I batter. His record itself refuses that reading: 1405 runs in 57 innings, a strike rate of 155.42, three hundreds, six fifties and 84 sixes. Those are not the numbers of a timid player or a passenger. They belong to someone who can break a match open in a session, sometimes in a spell of 20 balls. But they also carry the other half of the story. His average is 27.02. His median score is only 13. He has eight ducks. Of his 57 innings, 35 have ended below 20 and 43 below 30. That is the Sanju Samson contradiction. He is not short of impact. He is short of continuity. Samson’s India career has rarely moved in a straight line. It has moved like lightning: sudden, spectacular, and then gone. His best days are so good that they keep the argument alive. His quieter days are so frequent that they keep the doubt alive. Gautam Gambhir personally consoled Sanju Samson after the Indian team management. That is why “Why always Sanju?” remains such a loaded question. It contains sympathy, frustration and evidence all at once. He has been unlucky at times. He has also made himself vulnerable at times. He has been asked to survive in a system where one failure can become a headline, but he has also given that system too many clusters of failure to use against him.