IPL 2020 | India must be greatest team in history if they can't find place for Samson, admits Harsha Bhogle

IPL 2020 | India must be greatest team in history if they can't find place for Samson, admits Harsha Bhogle

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Sanju Samson has got off to a brilliant start in IPL 2020

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Harsha Bhogle has admitted that India must be the greatest cricketing team in cricket history if they don’t find Sanju Samson a place in the squad. He also admitted that the clash between Rajasthan and Punjab was like an incredible buffet that never seemed to get over, with enough action.

It was one of IPL’s greatest games played in the history of the competition, with 449 runs and just eight wickets on offer. In a pure batting paradise masqueraded as the Sharjah wicket, Kings XI Punjab got themselves off to a flyer with the openers putting on a 183-run partnership. Chief destroyer for the Punjab-based franchise was Mayank Agarwal, who scored a scintillating 50-ball 106, in a swashbuckling innings. Combined with the late efforts from Glenn Maxwell and Nicholas Pooran, the Punjab side got to a total of 223, which on the night was not enough.

Barring Jos Buttler and Robin Uthappa, all of Rajasthan Royals’ batting unit fired, with Sanju Samson and Steve Smith bailing them at the top of the order. While Smith was dismissed mid-way for a 27-ball 50, his partner at the other end, Samson continued to plunge the bowlers scoring a 42-ball 85, which wasn’t still enough to take them over the line. It needed a gargantuan effort from Rahul Tewatia to take them over the line, with a 31-ball 53. 

Following the encounter, Harsha Bhogle admitted that India must be the greatest cricketing team in the history of the sport if they can’t find a place for Sanju Samson in the setup. 

“Tewatia was 8 off 19 and then 53 off 31. If you had told him that you would end up with a strike-rate of 171, he wouldn’t have believed it. What it’s going to do though is take away Steve Smith’s brilliance and the artist Sanju Samson’s efforts. What a player Samson is if he continues to play like this and India don’t have a room for him in the team, then India must be the greatest team in history,” said Harsha Bhogle in a Cricbuzz video. 

“A lot of channels pay a lot of people a lot of money to enact a reality show, send them home. The Kings XI Punjab - Rajasthan Royals is a perfect unscripted reality show. When Samson and Smith were gone with just Tewatia. The all-rounder turned around fixed the key and boom, it changed the entire game. Sensational game of cricket,” he added. 

However, Bhogle felt that the entire encounter was an incredible buffet, which never seemed to get over. Despite the great finishing, Bhogle added that his only concern is that sixes have become a default option to score in Sharjah. 

“It was like an incredible buffet which never seemed to get over. There was one great dish after the other, if you had that one dish, you would feel that was great. This game would have been remembered as Mayank Agarwal’s game, Sanju Samson’s knock but we ultimately recall it as Tewatia’s game. What a game My only concern was that sixes were starting to become the default option. Some matches are bat versus bowl and its brilliant but today it was bat versus bat and what a drama.”

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