\u201cThe drought ended after a really long time and after that we never looked back. Everything changed in 2024. From there we understood how this team needs to work going forward, and it\u2019s been a wonderful journey since then. We wanted to do something special in front of our home crowd and we want to continue doing that and never stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gautam Gambhir, the India head coach, described Sanju Samson as \u201ca special player\u201d after the batter was named player of the tournament, having recovered from losing his place in a miserable buildup to return and produce defining innings in their three knockout games, starting with an unbeaten 97 in the winner-takes-all final fixture of the Super 8s, against West Indies, followed by scores of 89 in both the semi-final and the final.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing back from the kind of form that he was in takes so much character and courage, when you know that maybe your career is on the line,\u201d Gambhir said. \u201cMaking a comeback like that and playing those kind of innings, with that strike rate and that type of flamboyance, you need to be a special player, you to be special talent, and hopefully he can kick on from here. I think he deserves a lot more than actually he\u2019s got until now.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the final Samson revealed that he had been helped back into form by the legendary Sachin Tendulkar. \u201cI\u2019m out of words, out of emotions,\u201d he said. \u201cAfter the New Zealand series [in January, when he averaged 9.2] I was completely out of my mind. I thought: \u2018My dreams are shattered, what else can I do?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cBut God had different plans, and I was rewarded for being brave enough to dream. In the last couple of months \u2013 I hope I can share it here \u2013 I have been in constant touch with Sachin. I reached out to him and have had some big conversations with him. Getting guidance from someone like him, what more can I ask for?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mitchell Santner, the New Zealand captain, admitted his side had let themselves down on the night, saying in particular his bowlers could have been \u201cbraver with yorkers and bouncers\u201d.<\/p>\n\u201cWe all know that we weren\u2019t at our best, and if you aren\u2019t at your best against a very good team you\u2019re going to be exposed, and that\u2019s kind of what we were tonight,\u201d he said. \u201cWe could potentially have done things a little bit different in the powerplay, but it\u2019s pretty tough to stop guys when they\u2019re going. They\u2019re a very good team. They know how to play in these conditions, they play on a lot of flat wickets against quality sides and once they get going it\u2019s pretty tough to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"India\u2019s captain, Suryakumar Yadav, has set his sights on an extended period of white-ball dominance after the team secured a third successive ICC men\u2019s trophy with a one-sided victory against New Zealand in the T20 World Cup final. The country went more than a decade without winning a major trophy, but since 2024 they have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":232216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6803],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-232215","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}