Former India player turned veteran commentator Aakash Chopra has expressed his concern about Sanju Samson’s place in the Indian team’s playing XI after their 2-0 series loss against Ireland. He added that the Kerala wicketkeeper-batter is generally the first player dropped when someone has to be left out as well. However, India faced a one-run loss in the second T20I in Belfast on Sunday, June 28, to get whitewashed in the two-match series as well. Samson scored five runs in the first game, and he was dismissed for a golden duck in the second match as well.

Reflecting on India’s chase in the second T20I in a video shared on his YouTube channel, ‘Aakash Chopra,’ he said, “Sanju got out on the first ball. Now I am getting a little worried about Sanju because he is the first player on whom the wrath falls. If someone has to go out, the first man on the chopping block is Sanju. So I was secretly hoping he would score runs, and definitely in the second match once he got out in the first.”

“Jai Moondra actually bowls well. Abhishek Sharma got out on zero, Ishan Kishan got run out, and in the last two or three matches, whether you see the ODI series or here, Shreyas Iyer has not been scoring runs, and he is getting out the same way. Then you realize you are down in the dumps. Suddenly, you sent Axar Patel up the order, moved Shivam Dube down, had expectations from Suryansh Shedge, and you lost the game. You say how did that happen,” he shared again.

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However, Aakash Chopra also added that India faced back-to-back defeats to a team they shouldn’t have lost a single game against.

“We might say that we lost by just one run because Harshit Rana hit fours and sixes and made the match thrilling, and Prince Yadav hit a six off the last ball. Forget about the one run. The fact is that you have lost two matches to a team you shouldn’t have lost to even one,” he said.

“This will come in the trivia 20 years from now as to when India were clean swept against Ireland, and you would say it happened in 2026. It seems like Vaibhav Suryavanshi is inching closer to his international debut now because changes will have to be made if the batting performance is like this,” he concluded.