India wicket-keeper batter Sanju Samson opened up about his struggles in international cricket, a phase marked by self-doubt and challenges in making a comeback.
Having made his international debut in 2015 at the age of 20 against Zimbabwe in Harare as an injury replacement for Ambati Rayudu, Samson’s career since then has been stop-start, taking five years for him to earn his next national call-up.
“Talking about the environment in Kerala, breaking into the Indian team was itself a very big thing to me. And I had played for 2-3 years, and I was like, ‘You played for the country, boss well done,’ but then I realised that I couldn’t be satisfied with just this. It wasn’t enough at all so I started thinking, ‘What else, what else, what else,’” Samson told Ravichandran Ashwin on his YouTube channel.
“I had already made my debut when I was 20. It took around 5 years to make my next comeback. So, that was the next big dream… I wanted to make a big comeback into the side. That took a lot of work, physically and mentally,” he added.
Samson then revealed how he failed to deliver after his comeback, producing a string of low scores against Sri Lanka and New Zealand.
“I scored a 200 in the Vijay Hazare Trophy that’s when I made this comeback. I had that confidence, and after that, I got two games in New Zealand and one game in Pune. I didn’t perform there, and I went back with a lot of self-doubt. My confidence was shattered, and I was thinking on the lines of, ‘Everyone trusted you, and you didn’t score.’ You feel angry about yourself,” Samson admitted.
Self doubt
When Ashwin asked how he handles blows to his confidence, Samson replied: “That’s something that has constantly been happening to me. And you rightly observed, right from 2014, you think you have come to the Indian team and now everything will start happening. You get the feel that you waited for this, and you are ready for this. Suddenly, unexpected things happen. But you believe that next time you will do better, and what if you flop the next time, too? You definitely go through a very big self-doubt phase.”
Story continues below this ad
“Are you not good enough, boss? A lot of people say, ‘Sanju, they might have played you, or they didn’t play you, they are doing this, they are doing that.’ There will be 10,000 people giving you advice,” he added.
