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He can’t pinpoint the day or the train of thought which untied the knots in his mind, created out of the frustration of his cricket career being stuck. About four months ago, Sanju Samson turned off the switch in his mind which constantly relayed negative thoughts. Feeling like he had hit a nadir, Samson stopped obsessing about playing for India. This was shortly after the IPL season. When the India ‘A’ squads for ‘Tests’ and one-dayers were announced a month later, Samson missed the bus.
So instead of wearing blinders and thinking only about a potential India call-up, Samson spends his energy in grooming trainees at the Sports Authority of India’s centre at the Medical College Ground in Thiruvananthapuram.
His long-time coach Biju George talks about Sanju being an active member of a WhatsApp group called ‘MCG Spartans’ which comprised budding cricketers, their parents and a few senior players. ‘Spartans’, George says was in reference to the basic facilities the boys made do with.
“When youngsters posted a message on the group asking about technique, Sanju would offer to help. He would ask them to either call him on his mobile phone or would tell them that he would talk to them the next day during training. Once he started helping these kids, he derived a lot of satisfaction. He was just like one among them. When he was at the training center, he was just chetta (elder brother in Malayalam) and not Sanju Samson,” George says.
Samson, too, benefited from having a dedicated bunch of aspiring cricketers always willing to go out of their way to help him prepare. When he wanted to face a particular type of spinner, he would post a message on the group and ‘thumbs up’ would immediately follow. “We have all types of spinners here, including some bowlers who can bowl off the wrong foot. Sanju would message that he would like to face a particular kind of bowler the next day on the centre wicket and everybody would be eager to bowl at him,” the coach says.
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At the end of a training session, Samson would indulge the budding cricketers. “Today he ordered parotta and curry for them,” the coach said last week.
It was a treat to celebrate the India call-up to the T20 team for the three-match series against Bangladesh.
Samson’s only appearance for the senior India team has been a T20 International against Zimbabwe in 2015. His attacking game had been highly rated by former players but he didn’t have the volume of runs to force his way into the India team. He would be talked up after a string of good scores but the wicket-keeper batsman found himself down the pecking order when it came to India selection. Ishan Kishen, the wicketkeeper-batsman from Jharkhand, was picked for the India ‘A’ squad when Rishabh Pant was called for national duty in July. An opportunity went abegging when Samson failed a yo-yo test before an India A’ tour to England last year. He ran into headwinds back home with the Kerala Cricket Association and was sanctioned on two separate occasions.
However, over the past month he turned the corner. A 91 off just 48 balls against South Africa ‘A’ in a one-dayer and an unbeaten 212 against Goa in a Vijay Hazare Trophy game, the highest individual score in the tournament’s history, provided him the breakthrough.
I’ve realised it is okay to fail, I take things in my stride now: Sanju Samson
“I have to admit that I have gone through some very bad phases. People who have been close to me know what I went through and how bad it was. I started feeling ‘why am I playing cricket’ and ‘what do I do now’. I was lost and did not have any answers. I felt like it was a very deep failure for me. I was failing in matches but even when it came to cricketing thoughts I was failing (to think positive). Like ‘why should I practice’. But looking back now, I feel it was good that I experienced these failures in the last four years. If things were easy and simple after the age of 19 when I made my debut I don’t think I would have learnt how to recover after a failure,” Samson says.
During the difficult times, Samson leaned on former Mumbai opener Zubin Bharucha who is the head of cricket at the Rajasthan Royals, the IPL team which gave Samson his first big break. Bharucha understood Samson like few others have and the conversations between the two weren’t only restricted to technique.
“People may not know this, but Sanju is a very deep and complex person. Things do affect him a lot. He thinks a lot, he is deeply religious, he is conscientious. He is not superficial. We talked about the value of life beyond cricket, beyond the bat and ball. Understanding Sanju and his way of thinking is important,” Bharucha says. “He is a cricketing prodigy who lost his way, he had to discover what drives him, he had to conquer his mind and he had to find himself.”
Mentoring the young trainees at ‘MCG Spartans’ was part of Samson’s quest to rediscover the joy of cricket, Bharucha adds.
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The coach has a grievance against those who hold Samson’s lack of consistency against him. “The genius of players like Sanju need to be valued. People say Sanju is not consistent or for that matter they say the same about someone like Pant. I quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, the philosopher and poet: ‘consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds’. If you appreciate their special talent then consistency will follow,” Bharucha says.
At the time he went about clearing the cobwebs in his mind using yoga and meditation techniques, Samson also re-calibrated his fitness regimen. He enrolled himself at a curiously named gym Mad Shark. He started training with imported equipment used by rugby players and MMA fighters to develop explosive strength. “Eat less and perform better is the philosophy Samson followed,” says his trainer Sharan Kumar. “He worked on a combination of building explosive strength, speed and athleticism. He used to work out in the morning and then have his first meal only at 12 noon. And from 12 noon to 9 pm he would eat at regular intervals,” Kumar, an Asian Kettlebell Champion, says.
The trainer elaborates on the benefits of exercising while depriving the body of food for a few hours.
“Exercising on an empty stomach or while intermittent fasting helps boost the endocrine system and boosts the body’s growth hormone. Sanju is heavier but the 7 kilos he has added is all lean muscle, which is good muscle and this means he is much stronger but at the same time he is agile,” the trainer adds.
Changing his fitness routine, having ‘life talks’ with Bharucha and spending hours at his childhood coach George’s training centre helped Samson re-energise himself and rediscover his love for the game.
“Nowadays I find myself relaxed when batting, even smiling while batting… even when I miss a ball. Earlier I would get angry with myself and say ‘come on Sanju how could you miss that ball’, now I tell myself ‘it is ok, the bowler is also trying his best to get you out’. I have started enjoying the game once again, just like the times when I first started playing,” he says.
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