Yuvraj Singh, the legendary Indian cricketer, went on to claim that he helped shape Sanju Samson’s turnaround during the toughest phase of his career. He reflected on the failures that forced the batter to rethink his approach.
Sanju Samson has taken centre stage since India’s ICC T20 World Cup 2026 campaign. Despite having played only five matches in the competition, Samson finished as the third-highest run-getter overall and the highest for India.
The 31-year-old veteran cricketer played three magnificent knocks for India in the ICC T20 World Cup 2026, which is when it mattered the most for India. He broke several World Cup records, including the record of most runs for India in a single edition, most sixes, and also the most runs scored by an individual in a World Cup final.
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Yuvraj Singh highlighted Sanju Samson’s biggest flaw
Former Indian all-rounder revealed that a crucial conversation between Sanju Samson and himself helped the wicket-keeper batter turn around during the toughest phase of his career.
“Coming to Sanju Samson, who failed in 8-10 innings, was going through failure. That’s where you need to say, I need to change something. Sanju had reached that stage where he felt he was not finding a place in the XI.
“He had scored two hundreds in South Africa, so I felt… the conversation I had with him happened in 2024 when India won that World Cup in Barbados. In that World Cup, Sanju was not playing. I had been watching his batting for 2-3 IPL seasons. I told him we would speak whenever he had time,” he revealed while speaking on a podcast with Sports Tak.
The former left-hander highlighted the key technical flaws that he believed had held Sanju Samson back after the ICC T20 World Cup 2024, where he did not play in a single game, despite winning his maiden ICC trophy with India.
“So my issue with Sanju was, you have to improve your footwork. If you don’t improve your footwork, you will consistently land in trouble. Scoring runs or not is different, but you have to improve your footwork. I gave him some ideas on how to improve it,” Yuvraj backed the Indian opener.
Yuvraj revealed how Sanju Samson improved under high-pressure games
Yuvraj claimed that the initial results did not change immediately, as he noticed that the advice slowly helped the Indian batter improve as he got to spend more time at the crease in the high-pressure contest.
“After that, he played, didn’t do well, but then got another opportunity. I felt in the quarter-final, semi-final, and final, the more balls he faced, the better his footwork kept getting. The more time he spent on the wicket, the more his footwork improved. So I felt obviously he must have done something in his practice,” claimed the Indian all-rounder.
Samson became the first cricketer to have scored three centuries in a single calendar year in T20Is, and later, with three consecutive half-centuries in the T20 World Cup, he joined the elite list of cricketers to do so.
“Cricket is such a game; one innings can take you up or down” – Yuvraj Singh
The former World Cup winner with team India revealed that cricket is one such game where one special moment can help shift the entire momentum for a cricketer.
“Cricket is such a game; one inning can take you up or down. The game keeps you balanced in life; that’s what I have learnt. I am very happy for Sanju. He has been playing for so many years and had such an amazing World Cup. He is a very good kid, and I am very happy for his success,” said Yuvraj.
Consistency became the name for Samson as he registered three consecutive half-centuries, starting from the 97* against the West Indies that took India to a semi-final. He then scored 89 in back-to-back innings in the two knockout games to win his second consecutive final.
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