Delhi Daredevils became the second team in three days to be at the receiving end of a chastening lesson: never drop Robin Uthappa’s catch. On Friday, Amit Mishra and Sanju Samson circled under a top-edged pull from Uthappa , only to both bail out at the last moment. Uthappa, then on nine, went on to smash a 33-ball 59, his second consecutive half-century. When he was run-out in the 13th over, Kolkata Knight Riders needed only 44 runs off 46 balls to complete a chase of 161, which they did with 22 balls to spare.
Twenty-two-year-old Samson admitted that the reprieve cost Daredevils the game. When asked if there was a miscommunication between Mishra and him, he said it was difficult to communicate in the noisy environment.
“Yeah, I think that cost us the match. It’s a very busy crowd here. There’s a lot of noise, so it’s not easy to communicate when the ball goes up. It happens in [a] match, but I think we need to forget it and move on. We have a match day after [against Kings XI Punjab in Mohali].”
After his century against Rising Pune Supergiant, Samson has made a start in almost every innings, including scores of 42 and 39, but hasn’t kicked on. On Fridya, his dismissal after making a 38-ball 60 in the 14th over disrupted Daredevils’ momentum at the wrong time; they scored only 37 runs in the last six overs.
“There is a lot more ahead, I think I am still learning,” he said. “[If] I need to finish games, I need to play the whole 20 overs. Whenever you play 20 overs, the team has the best chance of winning the match. I am trying for that. I am still learning and I hope I will learn someday soon.”
Following their fourth consecutive defeat, Daredevils are at the bottom of the table with only four points in seven games. Samson admitted he couldn’t put a finger on why success has eluded his team for so long. He was philosophical in his response.
“When you play a sport like cricket, failure comes more than success,” he said. “As sportsmen, we all know how to come back from failure, so I think we need to keep going. In life also we face a lot of failures and have a doubts, but we need to have faith and go in with a positive mindset. It’s very difficult, but that’s the beauty of the game. We have to challenge ourselves and move on positively.”
Samson refused to buy into the suggestion that Daredevils’ batting-line up comprising young, fairly inexperienced Indian batsmen like himself, Karun Nair, Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant were struggling under the pressure to perform.
“We need pressure to perform in tough conditions. We are youngsters, but we have been playing four-five years of IPL. I think we are experienced enough to make the team win.”
He suggested that the team owed better performances to their management and mentor Rahul Dravid.
“It’s impossible to find a better team or a management than this,” he said. “We also feel bad that the team supports us so much and gives us so many good opportunities and yet we aren’t able to win games. But, we can’t take the emotions into the game. We will have to instead keep learning and keep doing better.
“With Rahul sir, youngsters like us learn a lot and he always backs us. We just want to perform and we just want to win matches for him. So we are just waiting for that to happen.” (ESPNCricinfo)
