Sanjay Manjrekar has a gift for the short sentence that lands like a full toss mid-stump. His verdict on Sanju Samson's omission from India's playing eleven against England was exactly that: 'Could've easily batted at 3.' Five words. No elaboration needed. The implication sits there, uncomfortable and unrefuted — that India left a usable, perhaps necessary, batting slot vacant in the interest of handing Vaibhav Sooryavanshi the stage.
Sooryavanshi's emergence is the kind of story cricket manufactures about once a decade. A teenager with raw ability that makes experienced commentators reach for superlatives they usually ration. His inclusion at the top of the order against England is a statement from selectors willing to bet on the arc of a career rather than the security of a known quantity. There is nothing wrong with that instinct. The problem is what it costs, and Samson is that cost — visible, recurring, and largely unacknowledged.
The 'Nearly Man' Who Keeps Paying the Bill
Indian cricket has a category of player that defies easy classification. Not discarded, not confirmed, not quite trusted with the permanence that form deserves. Samson has occupied this category for the better part of a decade. He scores. He catches eyes. He produces the kind of innings — the pulled six over fine leg off a 145 kph delivery, the cover drive that beats mid-off before the fielder moves — that justify every column inch written in his favour. And then the squad gets announced and his name is absent, or he sits out a match, or he opens and then is asked to come in at five, and the pattern continues without resolution.
Manjrekar's point about batting at number three is not trivial. The three-slot in limited-overs cricket is arguably the most demanding position on the card — it requires a player who can either consolidate after an early wicket or accelerate if the platform is set. It demands temperament, range, and the ability to read match situations in real time. Samson, at his best, possesses these qualities. Manjrekar is not saying Sooryavanshi should not play. He is saying the math does not work: if you bring in a teenager to open, and you have a player of Samson's calibre available, the sensible architecture is to use both, not to subtract one in favour of the other.
What the Selection Call Reveals About India's Transition
This series against England is operating on two tracks simultaneously. One track is the bilateral result — matches won and lost, series points accumulated. The other track, quieter but more consequential, is the T20 World Cup pipeline. Every selection decision is being read as evidence of what India's batting order will look like when the tournament arrives. In that context, the Sooryavanshi experiment is understandable. Selectors want to know now, under pressure, with English pace bowling probing early movement, whether the teenager's technique holds.
But the pipeline logic cuts both ways. If Sooryavanshi is being assessed, so is India's middle-order depth. A settled number three is not a luxury in knockout cricket — it is infrastructure. By leaving Samson out, selectors are either saying they have the three-slot solved by other means, or they are choosing not to look at that question right now. Neither reading is particularly reassuring. India's post-Rohit Sharma era is still finding its shape, and the batting order has the provisional feel of a building mid-renovation: functional, but not finished.
The Patience Test
The most instructive thing to watch in the coming fixtures is not Sooryavanshi's shot selection or his footwork against the moving ball, though both matter. It is whether selectors give him enough rope. Indian cricket has a recurring failure mode: a young player is introduced with fanfare, faces one difficult series, scores below expectations, and is then withdrawn before the investment has compounded. The result is a generation of players who were given a chance but not a run.
If Sooryavanshi is dropped after a single poor score, the 'generational shift' narrative collapses into the usual pattern — bold announcement, quiet retreat. If he is kept in, given matches to find his feet against high-quality opposition, then this selection looks like policy rather than impulse. The difference matters enormously for how India's batting culture develops over the next five years. Talent without institutional patience is just potential that expires.
Samson's position is equally worth tracking. His next IPL cycle and any First-Class cricket he plays will determine whether the recall conversation becomes irresistible. In Indian cricket, form at the domestic level does not automatically translate into selection — the pipeline from Ranji Trophy to Test cap has always had leaks, and the T20 format adds its own distortions — but sustained, visible scoring creates pressure that selectors eventually cannot absorb. The Rajasthan Royals' results in the next IPL cycle will partly be a referendum on Samson's standing.
Manjrekar's Critique and What It Actually Says
It is worth pausing on why Manjrekar's five words carry weight. He is not a romantic. He does not traffic in fan sentiment or nostalgia for players who narrowly missed greatness. His commentary style is analytical, sometimes to the point of provoking irritation among audiences who prefer warmer takes. When he says Samson could've batted at three, he is making a technical argument, not an emotional one. He is saying the team left a tactical option unused. That framing is different from the usual 'why doesn't Samson get more chances' lament that circulates on social media, and it is a more serious indictment.
Tactical waste in cricket is harder to quantify than tactical waste in, say, chess or athletics, because cricket's variables are so numerous — conditions, opposition, match situation, player confidence on the day. But the principle holds: if you have a hammer and you leave it in the bag, you are not demonstrating boldness. You are demonstrating a failure to use your tools. Manjrekar's suggestion is that India walked onto the field with a hammer in the bag.
The Larger Bet
Indian cricket has made large bets before and been vindicated. The decision to build an entire batting philosophy around aggressive, high-strike-rate openers transformed how the country plays white-ball cricket. The decision to persist with pace bowling partnerships through lean tours produced dividends in Test cricket that arrived years after the initial investment. Sooryavanshi's inclusion could belong to that lineage — a selection that looks audacious now and obvious in retrospect.
But those earlier bets shared a structural feature: they did not require the exclusion of immediately useful senior players to work. The current selection, as Manjrekar implies, may not have the same clean geometry. Sooryavanshi can be the future without Samson being the sacrifice. The question for the selectors, and for head coach Gautam Gambhir whose preference for aggressive top-order cricket will be visible in how this squad is constructed, is whether they can hold both truths at once: the teenager deserves exposure, and the thirty-year-old deserves a proper role.
If Sooryavanshi performs brilliantly in this series, the narrative writes itself and the scrutiny dissolves. If he struggles, India will have spent several matches in a bilateral contest with a self-imposed handicap — a number-three slot that could have been filled, wasn't, and cost points. That accounting will fall on selectors who chose spectacle over structure. Samson will say nothing public about it. He rarely does. That restraint has served him poorly in a system that sometimes mistakes loudness for confidence. But it also means that when the next recall comes — and it likely will — he will arrive without the residue of grievance, ready to bat wherever the card says, at whatever number the innings demands.
