Samson's weakness against raw pace, finishing woes in focus

During all previous three games, the Kerala batter couldn't even get his bat down as deliveries would thud into Phil Salt's gloves.

Pune: Sanju Samson's technical weaknesses against express pace along with Rinku Singh's dip in form and fitness issues will be a concern for India when they take on a resurgent England in the fourth T20 International here on Friday.

Having fluffed their chances in the third T20I in Rajkot, the penultimate game of the five-match series gives the hosts another opportunity to seal the series going into the final game in Mumbai on February 2. Suryakumar Yadav's men won the first two games in Kolkata and Chennai.

Samson, the maverick keeper-batter from Kerala, whose sympathetic and loyal fan base never fails to remind everyone of the limited chances he has got, started the T20I season with three hundreds against Bangladesh and South Africa prior to the ongoing series.

In the current rubber, he has had scores of 26, 5 and 3 and it is not these numbers that are concerning. In T20 cricket, if one factors in risk, there would always be lot of less profitable days at the office considering the kind of strokes batters play these days.

But in case of Samson, what is of concern is his palpable discomfort against anything bowled above 145 clicks.

Against Bangladesh at home, he faced Taskin Ahmed, Tanzim Hasan Shakib while in South Africa Andile Simelane and Lutho Sipamla were among the bowlers.

These are not exactly intimidating fast bowlers and he rightfully took them to the cleaners. These are bowlers who fire in between 130 to 140 clicks and can be hit through the line on flat decks.

However, Jofra Archer and Mark Wood are different beasts, bowling between 145 kmph to 155 kmph and that pace is creating problems for Samson.

During all three games, the Kerala batter couldn't even get his bat down as deliveries would thud into Phil Salt's gloves.

The hard lengths and steep bounce are creating a problem and even on batting shirt-fronts, it is not easy to hit through the line if one doesn't have proper technique or doesn't regularly face this quality of fast bowling.

Samson is one of head coach Gautam Gambhir's favourites and it is expected that he would be persisted with going into next year's T20 World Cup.

But his technical issues need to be sorted out at the earliest by Gambhir, new batting coach Sitanshu Kotak and the himself.

Dhruv Jurel looks a misfit

Rinku Singh's back spasms forced the team management to try Dhruv Jurel in the No.7 position but he has looked out of place in this particular format unlike Test cricket.

Rinku was rested for the first two games and he is expected to be fit before the fourth match.

But even Rinku, after a glorious start to his T20I career, has gone off the rails.

When Gambhir became Kolkata Knikght Riders mentor, Rinku got to play a total of 70 odd balls in the 2024 IPL. As a result, he couldn't make it to the T20 World Cup as Shivam Dube, with his bowling ability, was considered better in Americas.

The Indian middle order hasn't exactly played England spinner Adil Rashid well so far and with Dube back in the mix, will Gambhir take a chance with him? Looks unlikely as given the pace of England speedsters even the burly Mumbaikar would be ill at ease.

The third option is Ramandeep Singh, who also looks exciting as a finisher and is a better seamer than Dube. But even he is untested against quality pace attack.

Will Arshdeep be back in order to seal the series

Mohammed Shami needs a lot of bowling in match situations and the Rajkot game was a decent restart to his international career without being spectacular.

While a bilateral series win counts for little, Gambhir wouldn't like the ignominy of being the first coach under whom India lost a home T20I series against England.

Hence, it would be interesting if Arshdeep Singh, India's best T20I bowler in absence of Jasprit Bumrah is in line to come back and give some breakthroughs in the Powerplay overs.

Teams (from): India: Suryakumar Yadav (captain), Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson (wk), Tilak Varma, Axar Patel, Hardik Pandya, Washington Sundar, Varun Chakravarthy, Ravi Bishnoi, Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Shami, Dhruv Jurel (wk), Rinku Singh, Shivam Dube, Ramandeep Singh, Harshit Rana.

England: Jos Buttler (captain), Phil Salt (wk), Ben Duckett, Harry Brook, Liam Livingstone, Jamie Smith (wk), Adil Rashid, Brydon Carse, Jamie Overton, Gus Atkinson, Rehan Ahmed, Jofra Archer, Mark Wood, Jacob Bethell, Saqib Mahmood.

Match Starts at 7 pm IST. PTI KHS PM PM PM