Competition for places in the Indian team was arguably never as high as it is at the moment, especially in the T20 format. As India arrived in the T20 World Cup 2026, Ishan Kishan was handed a comeback to the national team while Shubman Gill, the team’s vice-captain in the format, was left out. Sanju Samson entered the tournament not in the finest of forms. He was even dropped from the playing XI in the middle-phase of the tournament, with Ishan Kishan taking up the opening role alongside Abhishek Sharma. Samson has now opened up on the competition for the opening spot in the T20 World Cup.
Samson, a man who isn’t one of the most vocal players in the team, admitted that the performances Ishan Kishan had produced in domestic cricket made him feel that he was coming for his spot in the national team.
“Honestly, Ishan Kishan came into the squad out of nowhere. He had a great Mushtaq Ali Trophy, he won the championship for Jharkhand and he has also had a great story, boss,” Samson said on the CSK podcast with Abhinav Mukund.
“We only look at ourselves, right? I think I have worked day in and day out, but lately I felt like Ishan had also done the same. After what happened to him for the last two years – he was out of the system – he worked so hard in domestic cricket and worked his way back. He had started scoring runs and I can admit it on camera that I could feel he was coming for my spot,” Samson added.
Samson even admitted that Ishan’s performances were such that he told himself that the southpaw deserved a spot over him in the team.
“In Trivandrum, when he scored that hundred, I was like, ‘Sanju, now you just give it to him, boss. He deserves it more than you do. You got your chances, you didn’t score runs, but there is someone who is in tremendous form.’ He came out of the Mushtaq Ali Trophy, did everything right to reach there and then scored a century just before the World Cup started. So now I think, ‘Sanju, you just leave it,'” Samson said.
The trio of Samson, Ishan and Abhishek all featured in India’s XI, scoring half-centuries in the final against New Zealand as the country lifted the title for the third time in its history.
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