IND vs NZ: Kotak confident of Samson’s abilities despite lack of runs in T20I series
Sanju Samson’s lack of runs has been a talking point in the T20I series between India and New Zealand that concludes with the fifth match at the Greenfield Stadium on Saturday. His scores have read 10, 6, 0 and 24.
But India’s batting coach Sitanshu Kotak is not reading too much into it.
“We all know what Sanju is capable of,” he said. “He probably has not scored as many runs as everybody would have liked to, but that’s part of cricket. Sometimes, you have five innings in a row where you score so many runs, and sometimes you go through a little rough period. So it’s all up to an individual how to keep his mind strong, and obviously, our job is to keep him in a good frame of mind. He practises and works hard.”
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India’s captain Suryakumar Yadav seems to have put behind him his disappointing form with back-to-back fifties in the series. “He has been, for a long time, the world’s best T20I batsman,” the coach said. “So we always knew that he would score runs. And of course it is nice that he has had those two good innings in the series, before the World Cup.”
About Abhishek Sharma’s batting, Kotak said he played the ball on its merit. “He is someone who plays a lot of shots, but his shots don’t seem like slogging,” he said. “When you are an aggressive batsman, and you are trying to play maximum shots on the merit of the ball.”
He said Abhishek was a clever batter. “In the second game, he got out playing big on the square leg, so in the next, when he batted, you could find that he was prepared,” he said. “He was planning for the bowlers to bowl in those areas, and he was ready for that.”
Published on Jan 30, 2026
