T20 World Cup 2026: On witnessing Sanju Samson—‘Superman’ in flesh, blood and glory

Lost in the tide of jersey sellers outside the Narendra Modi Stadium, a little boy sat cross-legged on the pavement, presiding over a tiny universe of cricket posters, plastic toys, dog-eared first copies of popular paperbacks, and, somewhat improbably, a few old comic books.

One of them, its soft cover fluttering in the Ahmedabad breeze, appeared to belong to DC’s coveted All-Star Superman series.

It beckoned from the corner like a forgotten relic, but the stadium gates were still some distance away, and the traffic ahead churned like a stubborn sea of blue. For the moment, it seemed wiser to cut through the chaos and keep moving. One could always come back, was the thought.

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Once inside the venue, the world outside was quickly forgotten as India was put in to bat. Even if there was a ghost of an afterthought that lingered, it was quickly swallowed by an LBW appeal off the very second ball that Sanju Samson faced. New Zealand’s Matt Henry had just gotten it to nip back in. Even as the UltraEdge revealed a spike, the blood pressure came back down to normal.

Samson had walked into the game riding a blazing run of form: an 89 in the semifinal against England and an unbeaten 97 in the must-win Super Eight clash against West Indies. Cricket may be a team sport, but India’s campaign might have well been buried six feet under if not for Samson’s belligerent interventions.

Four balls faced by Samson, four dots. One could feel the nervous energy shift inside the press box. But he waited and waited a bit more. The bowler was bound to make an error eventually, as all his coaches would have told him his entire life. And then it came, almost like an announcement—a premeditated move forward to meet the length ball with the meat of the bat. A resounding crack followed as a missile was launched down the ground. Skipper Suryakumar Yadav’s post-match thoughts on Samson after the Windies game found relevance once again. “Good things happen to good people who wait, who have a lot of patience.”

Samson had been here two years ago. On the big stage of the T20 World Cup, yet relegated to the bench. He was supposed to play in the big final against South Africa, but 10 minutes before the toss, the team plan changed again, and Samson ended up without a game. He clapped as Rohit Sharma did the Ric Flair walk and lifted the trophy, smiled for the cameras, and returned home.

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Once Samson knew what it felt like to be on top of the world, he wanted to relive the feeling, albeit this time as an indispensable member of the eleven. So, back home, he began to bury himself in preparations.

But in 2025, things took a turn for the worse. The Kerala wicketkeeper-batter managed to get only one score in excess of 50 in 15 games. Incidentally, the said half-century not only came against minnow Oman in the Asia Cup but was also scored at a languid pace, off 45 balls in 79 minutes.

At the turn of the next T20 World Cup year, trolls reared their ugly heads once again as Samson registered scores of 10, 6, 0, 24, and 6 during a New Zealand home series. They called him finished, but the 31-year-old knew he had a job to do.

“I’ve kept on doubting myself, kept on thinking, ‘What if (I don’t make it)? Can I make it?’ Thanks to the Lord Almighty for actually blessing me today. I’m very happy,” an emotional Samson would say after the West Indies fixture, his third of this World Cup.

Samson has had a marked improvement while facing length, back of a length, and short balls channelled outside off stump. In 2025, he got out eight times while facing 64 such deliveries. This year, he could only be dismissed twice off 63 balls. Which is why his average has seen a sharp rise to 72.5 from 9.75 in this regard. As part of dealing with the problem, Samson has started playing more shots behind the square—35.8 per cent compared to 30.7 per cent earlier.

Then there was the recurring weakness of facing pacers across hard lengths. But the uptick in the last three years has been phenomenal. His strike rate against said bowling was 148.78 in 2024, 130.95 in 2025, and as of writing, a massive 276.31 in 2026. The average has gone from 15.25 to 11.00 and presently stands at 105.00!

“I have been playing this format for a very long time. Actually, not playing, but looking from the dugout, learning from greats like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma. I think it’s very important to observe and learn what they were doing. I think that really helped me. I have only played maybe 50-60 games, but I’ve watched around 100 (from the bench). I’ve seen how the greatest people have finished games and how they change their game according to the situation. This (game vs. West Indies) is one of the greatest days of my life,” Samson said.

He was right. It was only one of the greatest days, for the greatest ever was yet to come.

In the final, Samson paced his innings nicely, allowing his partner Abhishek Sharma to play his natural game. He complemented him well, punishing the bowlers for every poor delivery sent his way.

Mitchell Santner, the New Zealand captain, had depleted four bowlers inside the first four overs, and Lockie Ferguson, the last of them, almost had Samson in a fix when a leading edge sailed towards Mark Chapman at deep backward point. But thankfully, for Samson and India, the fielder could only watch it clatter into the advertisement boards.

When Samson got a boundary past the short fine-leg fielder off the last ball of the fourth over, the Indian pair had already eclipsed the previous highest opening stand in a men’s T20 World Cup final of 48 by Kamran Akmal and Shahzaib Hasan in 2009.

By the 10th over, it was evident that the spectators were in the middle of witnessing something special. More so, because Samson had just somehow managed to ping a yorker outside off to the fence with mind-boggling ease and pinpoint precision. It was almost as if Samson got James Bond’s license to kill after he reached his fifty off 33 balls. And Ferguson bore the brunt, with the pacer conceding two back-to-back sixes and a four in the 12th over.

Samson saved his best for Rachin Ravindra. The left-arm spinner was walloped to three different corners of the park off consecutive deliveries.

“Earlier, he was predictable. He would just go back in the crease—leg stump to leg stump. Today he was all over the shop. He was outside the crease when he hit Henry for a six in the first over itself. The beauty of Sanju is there is brute force, there is a deft touch, there’s plenty of class, and he plays cricketing shots. Very little improvisation. He just treats the bowling on merit and has got that power to clear the fence on any ground,” Ravi Shastri would later analyse.

When Samson finally mistimed, he walked off to a standing ovation. Naming him the Player of the Tournament had become a mere formality by then.

As all 86,824 people in the stadium paid homage for having unlocked a core memory to be kept safe their entire lives, the writer decided not to get the Superman comic. After all, he had just witnessed one in flesh, blood, and glory.

Published on Mar 10, 2026