There’s purity in Sanju Samson’s batting; it’s almost spiritual in nature: Coach Zubin Bharucha

Mumbai: The night Sanju Samson bludgeoned an unbeaten 97 off 50 balls to propel India into the T20 World Cup semi-finals, his long-time mentor Zubin Bharucha watched from Dubai, ducking not just in excitement at every boundary but, quite literally, at air-raid sirens. “It’s all a little strange. But hanging in there,” the former Mumbai cricketer-turned-coach told TOI, before diving into a conversation that revealed why Samson’s innings at Eden Gardens on March 1 felt like more than just runs on a scoreboard.

Bharucha, who first met a 17-year-old Samson, has now spent 14 years fine-tuning a talent he describes as touched by an almost divine simplicity. “Resilience has been his hallmark,” Bharucha said. “But what is incredible about him is the person he is—which is what you see reflected in his batting. There is a sense of purity to it. Almost spiritual in nature. He cares more about whether he has taken care of the people in his church than his own personal runs or achievements. That’s just who he is as a person and you can see that in the purity of the strokeplay.”

The road to Kolkata had been anything but smooth. A month earlier, Samson mustered only 46 runs in five T20Is against New Zealand at a paltry 9.20 average and was dropped from the XI on the eve of the global showpiece. Invited by the batter to Thiruvananthapuram for a four-day pre-series camp, Bharucha drilled every conceivable scenario: variable bounce, side-arm slingers, wrist-spin, quicks pounding in. “The focus was around not leaving any stone unturned in terms of what he might expect to be thrown his way,” the coach recalled.

The homework crystallised in the final over against West Indies when Romario Shepherd speared one into the slot. Samson cleared the front leg and flicked a 91-metre six into the stands. “What we plan for is the hands to be in front of the stumps to attack the stump line and outside off-stump balls,” Bharucha explained. “For that to happen, you need to make a back-and-across movement. It’s a similar movement to what legends like Graeme Pollock used to make back in the day.”

Bharucha rates Samson’s Durban hundred against South Africa—made on a spicy pitch where the next-best score was Tilak Varma’s 33—as proof of his high-skill ceiling. “It was Jansen, Coetzee bowling quick and then Maharaj, Markram. Abhishek got hit on the head by Jansen. That was also a high-class innings,” he said, drawing parallels between Samson’s high back-lift and “a right-handed Brian Lara in terms of the high backswing.”

Yet the coach, who has seen the highs and lows of an IPL veteran still searching for permanence in India’s white-ball set-up, refuses to treat the West Indies blitz as a destination. “As I always tell the players, this is only the beginning, fingers crossed,” he signed off, mindful that missiles overhead and milestones on the field are both reminders of how fragile and exhilarating sport can be.