Sanju Samson opened the batting for India in the first T20I against Afghanistan at Arun Jaitley Stadium, Delhi, on September 13, 2026, a match that marked
Shreyas Iyer's first outing as India's captain in the shortest format at home. Samson had been competing with Vaibhav Sooryavanshi to partner Abhishek Sharma at the top of the order. The selection decision came after Samson was dropped for the Zimbabwe T20I series, after he had recorded scores of 27, 1, 0, and 5 in his last four T20Is.
Aakash Chopra supported the choice to field Samson in the opening position. The former India opener stated that he was focusing on Samson's case because of the perceived injustice in his earlier exclusion. He explained that Samson had won the T20 World Cup 2026 as Player of the Tournament before being left out after poor performances in two matches. In the Afghanistan match, Samson scored 10 runs from 8 balls before getting out to Azmatullah Omarzai.
"I was focusing on only one guy, and that was Sanju Samson, because, thus far, we have been saying that a slight injustice has been done to him. You win the World Cup, and then you are left out after performing badly in two matches. However, he got out again. He was batting decently, but was caught in the deep," Chopra said in a video on his YouTube channel.
"So one innings has gone bad, and the innings are getting counted. Vaibhav Suryavanshi is sitting outside. There is already a question now because you made Vaibhav sit out after doing well in Zimbabwe. I was in favor of playing Sanju, but the pressure will keep mounting because the pressure will be there until Vaibhav keeps sitting out," he added.
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Sooryavanshi had performed well in the Zimbabwe series and was retained in the squad for the Afghanistan assignment. His T20I strike rate stands at 189.22, and he had made a compelling case with his scoring rate and performances in Zimbabwe. However, the decision to bench him in favour of Samson created a situation where pressure would continue to build on the veteran batter.
