The door didn’t just creak; it shattered.
It happens every few months. A coach stands in front of a microphone, looks at a room full of people waiting for a reason to tweet, and says the name. Sanju Samson. This time it was Ryan ten Doeschate, the man currently tasked with being the "disruptor" in India’s new coaching ecosystem. By refusing to rule out Samson’s inclusion, ten Doeschate didn’t just provide a tactical update. He hit the factory reset button on a debate that has been glitching for half a decade.
In the world of Indian cricket, Samson is the ultimate piece of vaporware. He’s the high-spec foldable phone that looks stunning in the renders but develops a screen crease the moment you actually try to use it. Fans love him because he represents an aesthetic ideal—pure, unadulterated ball-striking without the boring baggage of "situational awareness" or "averages." He’s the cult indie app that everyone claims is better than the mainstream version, even though it crashes twice a day.
Ten Doeschate’s comments feel like a strategic leak. When a new product lead takes over—in this case, the Gambhir-ten Doeschate partnership—they usually want to signal a break from the previous OS. The Rahul Dravid era was stable, predictable, and ultimately successful. It was Chrome. It worked. It was safe. Gambhir and ten Doeschate seem to want something more aggressive. Something with more "edge."
But here’s the friction. Cricket isn’t a software patch. You can’t just swap out a stable middle-order bat for a high-variance wildcard like Samson without breaking the entire build. If Samson comes in, someone has to be deleted. And in a lineup already bloated with talent, that’s not a clean uninstall. It’s a messy, public conflict.
Think about the trade-off. You’re potentially benching players who have actually delivered consistent uptime for a guy whose career has been a series of spectacular, short-lived demos. Ten Doeschate talked about "flexibility" and "options," which is coach-speak for "we don't actually have a plan yet, so we’re keeping all the tabs open." It’s the sports equivalent of a tech CEO saying they’re "pivoting" when the initial launch misses the mark.
The Samson cult is already online, of course. They’ve been refreshing their feeds, waiting for this specific validation. To them, Samson isn't a player; he’s a symbol of the "system" holding back genius. But the system exists for a reason. It’s there to ensure the lights stay on when the pressure hits 400 degrees. Samson hasn't proven he can handle the heat without short-circuiting. Not consistently. Not when it matters.
Ten Doeschate is playing a dangerous game here. By mentioning Samson, he’s invited the noise back into the room. He’s opened a Pandora’s box of expectations that he might not be able to manage once the actual match-day pressure starts mounting. It’s one thing to talk about "limitless potential" in a press conference; it’s another thing entirely to watch a middle order collapse because your "X-factor" player played a cross-batted heave to a straight delivery in the third over of his innings.
The "New India" brand of cricket loves the idea of being fearless. They want to be the "move fast and break things" version of a national team. But usually, when you move that fast, the things you break are your own trophies. Samson is the perfect avatar for this philosophy—brilliant, erratic, and deeply polarizing.
We’ve seen this movie before. We’ve seen the hype cycles. We’ve seen the "Sanju 2.0" headlines. Usually, it ends with a quiet omission and a return to the status quo. But ten Doeschate sounds like he’s actually willing to ship this version to production.
He might think he’s being inclusive. He might think he’s building a deeper squad. In reality, he’s just given a billion people a reason to complain when the inevitable bug report comes in.
If the "Samson era" finally happens, will it be the sleek, high-performance upgrade the fans are screaming for? Or are we just looking at another expensive hardware failure waiting to happen?