The relationship between head coach Gautam Gambhir and the Team India cricketers isn’t like that of a typical player-coach one. The coach and the players share a relationship where most of their conversations take place during training sessions.

Many important messages are also shared during such conversations. Like, Gambhir told Sanju Samson about the keeper-batter's return to the playing XI (in the T20 World Cup Super Eight match against Zimbabwe) while they were training together.

“I conveyed it to Sanju at the gym. In fact, we were both training together, and I just told him that, ‘You’ll be playing against Zimbabwe.’ And he said, ‘Let it come.’ That’s the kind of casual conversation we have.

“It’s not like a head coach and player’s relationship. It’s a relationship where most of our one-on-one conversations happen during practice sessions,” Gambhir said on JioStar’s ‘Follow The Blues’.

Highlighting what Samson — Player of the Tournament in India’s triumphant T20 World Cup campaign — brings to table, Gambhir said: “We know what Sanju can do. There was never any doubt about his talent and explosiveness. If he gets going, he can win you the game in the first six overs. Imagine having Abhishek (Sharma), Sanju and Ishan (Kishan) as your top three, and then you have the likes of Surya (Suryakumar Yadav), Hardik (Pandya), Tilak (Varma), Shivam (Dube) and Axar (Patel) to follow. So, you can’t ask for anything more.”

Samson’s hand-eye coordination and timing, which are the two crucial elements of his batting, give him a fair chance of finding a place in India’s ODI squad as well.

In the T20 World Cup, one also noticed his ability to deal with spin better than the others in the current Indian top order. Following India’s loss to South Africa in the Super Eight clash in Ahmedabad, batting coach Sitanshu Kotak had acknowledged the need to make a tweak or two after repeated struggles of the team’s then opening duo of Abhishek and Ishan as well as Tilak (who was batting at No. 3 then) against off-spin in the Powerplay.

Bringing Samson back in the XI was seen as a solution to it. According to Gambhir, the move to bring Samson back was to “add more firepower at the top.”

Backing Abhishek

Elaborating on backing Abhishek even after the opener was out for three ducks on the trot in the T20 Cup, Gambhir recounted his own experience when he too went through a torrid time in IPL 2014.

“I’ve had a worse experience than him in 2014 during the IPL, when I got three ducks in a row and then another in the fourth game as well. All I told him was, ‘People will look at your scores and will talk about your form, but actually you are not out of form. You are just out of runs. The only time you can judge your form is when you have played 20 to 30 balls in the middle.’

“All I wanted him to do was go out there in the next game and be even more aggressive, compared to what he was in the previous game.”