Sanju Samson was once hailed as India's greatest young batsman by Gautam Gambhir and complimented by Sachin Tendulkar previously for his impressive striking form. However, the young cricketer from Kerala has been receiving abject criticism from disappointed fans for his performance in the Rajasthan Royal's team in the Indian Premier League 2020.
Twitter criticism included complaints of the batsman being "over-hyped and overrated" and pointing out the inconsistency in his performance across the years.
"This has been Sanju's problem. He'll play for 2-3 matches and tanks afterwards. He's very inconsistent. He must step up if Rajasthan wants to do well," one fan tweeted.
Another user pointed out that Sanju would shine in one or two games then promptly "fail the whole tournament."
This is the eighth Indian T20 League for Samson, and not even once in the season has the wicket-keeper cum batsman crossed the 500-run mark. His reputation as the youngest batsman to cross 1000 runs has not been carried over, detractors say, blaming poor shot selection. The swashbuckling batsman of earlier days has not made a comeback.
West Indian legend Brian Lara claimed Sanju looked good in the 2020 IPL edition this far, but stated that he faces trouble against quality bowling attack on tricky batting wickets.
Talking about Rajasthan's win against CSK, captain Steve Smith said in the post-match interview that Sanju " He had been unlucky tonight, the message is to keep the faith, trust his ability, we know he's a great ball striker, trust it, keep the process simple and watch the ball closely."
He, along with overseas talents such as Jos Buttler, Steve Smith, Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer, are crucial to the successes of their teams. But without an Indian talent keeping forth, no IPL franchise can find success. Samson is undoubtedly one of the Royals' batting assets for every IPL season at 25, and they can accomplish nothing individually without him achieving individual success.