Former India spinner R Ashwin showed his quick wit to thwart an attempt by a fan to casually troll him over Sanju Samson’s repeated failures in the recently concluded five-T20I series between New Zealand and India.
India had won the first three T20Is to pocket the series, but New Zealand came back strongly to win the last two T20Is. In the recent fifth T20I, India was asked to bat first and posted 191/8 in 20 overs thanks to fifties by Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer and 33 by Naman Dhir.
However, 93 by Tim Seifert and 65* by Glenn Phillips ensured that New Zealand achieved the target in 18 overs and won the game by 7 wickets.
Sanju Samson was the point of contention, as after scoring a splendid fifty in the first T20I, his performance dipped significantly. He scored 14, 18, 4, and 4 in the rest of the matches, finishing the T20I series with 107 runs in 5 games with a strike rate of 142.66.
In addition, because Samson held his place so reliably in the playing XI, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi got to feature in only two matches, batting at no. 3 in one of them, while in the other game, he came in the opening position he prefers.
A fan on social media tried to mock R Ashwin on social media, given how much backing the former spinner has given to the Kerala batter.
“हेलो अश्विन तेरा फर्स्ट चॉइस संजू पूरे सीरीज में फूस हो गया @ashwinravi99," the netizen tweeted on Sunday afternoon.
Not the one to take any trolling lightly, Ashwin replied: “संजू मेरा फर्स्ट चॉइस है, तुम्हारा फुल-टाइम ऑब्सेशन”
This is not the first occasion on which Samson has come under scrutiny for his shortage of runs. Following his standout performances in the T20 World Cup, he then managed scores of 5, 0, 1, 27, and 10 against Ireland and England before losing his spot in the XI to Sooryavanshi.
Samson was also absent from the Zimbabwe T20Is, a series in which Sooryavanshi was named Player of the Series. However, Samson came back to reclaim his place for the home series against Afghanistan, where he made 10, 57, and 50.
