I imagined a phone call between Gautam Gambhir and Sanju Samson. Not the kind that gets announced on TV with dramatic music, but the kind that quietly explains how selections sometimes work. It starts simple: Gautam calls and asks where Sanju is. Samson says he’s at the hotel, just two rooms away. Close enough for a quick coffee and an even quicker reality check.
Gautam says he wants to “share thoughts” about the Zimbabwe team. Sanju’s first reaction is the most honest one: the squad is already announced, so what thoughts are left to share? Still, they agree to meet. They walk down to the coffee shop, the kind of place where conversations sound calm, but every line changes something.
Over coffee, Gautam begins with praise. He calls Samson an outstanding servant of Indian cricket. He credits him for helping deliver the World Cup and retaining it. It’s the kind of compliment that should feel big, but in this conversation it becomes the soft opening line before the hard part. Because right after that, Gautam drops a twist: this Zimbabwe tour is “only” so that V. V. S. Laxman can become coach and Gautam can take a holiday. And in that holiday mood, he jokes that maybe he and Samson should just go to Kerala instead of going to Zimbabwe.
Samson is polite, but you can hear the confusion. If this was the plan, why wasn’t he told earlier? He had been preparing for Zimbabwe while Gautam was dreaming about Kerala. Now it’s all mixed up. So Samson suggests they do something else, and Gautam responds with a line that sounds like clarity but feels like dodge: fine, he’ll stay in Delhi and Samson can stay in Kerala.
Samson asks the obvious question: is this the “clarity” about selection? And that’s when the real explanation arrives, dressed up as helplessness. Gautam says the management already picked another wicketkeeper-opener, so there wasn’t a slot. Then comes the part that stings: TV wants a particular young name around “all the time” for eyeballs, and the market pulls the strings. So Samson becomes the casualty. Gautam insists it’s nothing personal. It’s just business.
That word—market—hangs in the air. Sanju responds like someone who has seen this movie too many times. The market has been reacting like this for a long time, he says. And when there is a need, he’ll be called. That’s the arrangement, right? Be ready when they want you, be invisible when they don’t.
Gautam tries to soften it with the usual consolation prize: “You’re in the team for the Asian Games, remember?” Sanju’s reply cuts through the comfort line: what Asian Games, and who even plays there? Gautam insists it’s an honor, that representing the country anywhere should make a player proud.
And that’s where Sanju finally says what many players probably feel but rarely get to speak out loud. He is proud—of his state, his club, his country, everything. But pride doesn’t cancel doubt. Pride doesn’t explain why patterns repeat. He brings up what happened with Suryakumar Yadav. He hints it could happen with Shreyas Iyer. And he says it feels like it’s happening to him too: a slow slide into being “useful” only when convenient.
The imagined conversation ends without shouting, without drama, and maybe that’s the point. Sanju thanks him for the clarity, wishes him well in Delhi, and returns to practice in Kerala—where it’s raining heavily, making even practice difficult. It’s a quiet ending for a loud truth: in modern cricket, performance matters, but timing, roles, optics, and the market can matter just as much.
This isn’t a claim about any real call. It’s a mirror held up to a system that often feels confusing from the outside and even more confusing for the players inside it. The saddest part is not rejection. Players can handle rejection. The saddest part is uncertainty packaged as “clarity,” where the message is: keep working, stay ready, and accept that your career might be decided by requirements you’ll never control.
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