It’s taken Sanju Samson 4 years and 9 months to score his 11th hundred. No, that’s not when he made his debut. His first-ever first-class game came in 2011, and in the next eight years, he scored 10 hundreds. But the wait for his 11th red-ball ton has been long.
He played the Ranji Trophy 2022-23 and 23-24 seasons and scored 4 fifties in 11 innings but could never get into the triple digits. You thought he’d break his dry spell in the Duleep Trophy 2024. But he wasn’t selected for the first-round. He finally got a chance in the India A vs India D match, but that ended in disappointment. He recorded a single-digit score in the first innings (5) and looked great in the second dig, only for him to get out on 40.
Sanju Samson comes good under pressure
The third and last round of the Duleep Trophy was going to be his last chance. Put into bat first by India B, the start for Shreyas Iyer’s India D raced off the blocks. Three fifties by Devdutt Padikkal, KS Bharat and Ricky Bhui were followed by a flurry of low scores by Nishant Sindhu, Shreyas Iyer and Saransh Jain. To put things into perspective, they went from 105/0 to 217/5.
However, Samson stayed put. Not only that, he was striking at a rapid pace. He was 89* overnight and got to his 11th first-class century in just 94 balls with 11 fours and 3 sixes to his name. Samson was batting with the same aggressive intent he’d in the last match, but unlike that day, today in Anantapur, things were going his way.
Samson faced a line-up that included four bowlers who’ve represented Team India: Mukesh Kumar, Navdeep Saini, Washington Sundar, and Rahul Chahar. He was in control against all of them. He particularly took a liking to Saini and Sundar, smashing him for 55 runs in just 36 balls. However, Saini eventually got him on 106, but Samson’s job was already done by then, as the score was well past 300 by then.
Sanju Samson’s first-class record
| Mat | Inns | Runs | HS | Ave | SR | 100s | 50s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 63 | 104 | 3668 | 211 | 38.2 | 58.89 | 10 | 16 |
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