‘I’ve decided to play on my terms’: Samson on quitting India selection ‘rat race’

4 min readJul 28, 2026 09:05 AM IST Indian batter Sanju Samson. (Deepak Malik / CREIMAS for BCCI)Four months since steering India to T20 World Cup glory with his sensational knockout performances, Sanju Samson was supposed to build on the success at home, but has instead fallen out of the national side once again. Over a decade has passed since his international debut and his subsequent stop-start journey that eventually culminated in his first major contribution for the national side, earning him the Player of the Series award at the T20 World Cup. But the 31-year-old Samson revealed that he was done chasing the national team selection shortly before the World Cup when his batting form had hit a wall.“I realised that there is a constant rat race in our country, and I decided before the 20