After Rajasthan Royals’ (RR) nail-biting win over Chennai Super Kings (CSK), skipper, Sanju Samson accepted that it was mentally tiring for him as a leader, despite him playing just a few deliveries he played as a batter. Samson was cleaned up for a duck in RR’s away game against MS Dhoni and Co. at the Chepauk.
The wicketkeeper-batter only managed to score 17 off 17 balls when RR hosted CSK in their backyard earlier this season. Extending his unimpressive run in RR’s previous fixture, RR only managed to score 14 off 10 balls against Mumbai Indians (MI) as the record-time winners registered a morale-boosting 6-wicket win over RR on Sunday.
Sharing his views about the recently concluded IPL 2023 match between RR and MI on YouTube, former Indian opener Aakash Chopra criticized Samson for failing to defend such a huge score at the Wankhede Stadium. Chopra explained, “Rajasthan is facing another problem. Jos Buttler is not fired, as he usually does, this year. The start was very good but he has gone down slightly. Sanju Samson hasn’t scored runs at all.”
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Averaging 23.56 in 9 games of the cash-rich league, Samson has only managed to score 212 runs for the 2008 champions. RR opener Jos Buttler also played a forgetful knock of 18 off 19 balls against Mumbai Indians. In a match where Buttler and Samson failed in the same game, the RR opener Yashasvi Jaiswal shattered multiple records with his maiden century in the IPL.
However, Jaiswal’s knock went in vain as RR lost the match by 6 wickets. “So as good a team as they are, because they have (Shimron) Hetmyer, Dhruv Jurel, and Devdutt Padikkal as well, the team is good, but two main players not scoring runs, that’s a problem,” Chopra observed.
Chopra, who used to play for Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) during his playing days, was also miffed at Samson for opting to bat first at Wankhede.
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Explaining the same, Aakash Chopra said, “It was amazing that Rajasthan chose to bat after winning the toss. You don’t do that in Mumbai. You want to chase in Mumbai because dew comes later and it is a chase-friendly ground, although Punjab won while batting first in the last game, but they didn’t win the toss.”
