Samson urges patience with Abhishek after India’s defeat, looks ahead to T20I decider

Sanju Samson blazed away with a 23-ball 56 in the fourth T20I in Hyderabad as India launched their chase of 248 on Wednesday.

His partner Abhishek Sharma struggled and played an uncharacteristically slow knock, consuming 24 deliveries for his 29 — his lowest strike rate in any T20I innings where he faced more than 20 balls — as the pair added 60 in an opening stand.

But the others failed to make an impact, except for Tilak Varma and Nitish Kumar Reddy, who put on 70 for the sixth wicket.

“Ishan (Kishan) and Abhi­shek Sharma are the world’s best top two batters, You cannot ask anything more out of them. (Abhishek) just scored a really good 69 in the last game and Ishan is consistently scoring a lot of runs, so onegame is totally fine,” Samson said, backing his teammates on Wednesday.

“When Tilak and Reddy were batting, we were still in the game,” said Samson. “(They) were taking (on) the pressure moments and they were batting really well, so I think till that moment I think we were in the chase.”

The partnership ended with Tilak’s dismissal at the end of the 17th over and India fell short by 24 runs.

“It all comes down to (the) Bangalore game now... we want to go out there and compete against them. They (West Indies) have been playing some really great cricket, you need to give credit, how they have come to our home ground and dominated two games. Now it is a final, so let us see...”