Former Indian Test opener Aakash Chopra believes dropping Sanju Samson for three-match T20I series against Zimbabwe isn’t the right call. Samson was dropped from the second T20I against England as Vaibhav Sooryavanshi made his much-awaited debut.

The Kerala batter returned with scores of 5, 0 and 1 in the last three T20I innings and thus the pressure was building on him. However, Samson was the star of the show in the 2026 T20 World Cup, scoring 321 runs in five matches at a strike rate of almost 200 and was awarded Player of the tournament.

Furthermore, Samson had a decent run in IPL 2026, scoring 477 runs for Chennai Super Kings in 14 matches.

“Honestly, it’s wrong. When we played the first T20I, I also believed you wouldn’t be able to make Vaibhav sit out since you had lost the series to Ireland, but you would have to make a rotation policy to give him a chance. You don’t make the other guy disappear to make a place for someone,” Chopra said on his YouTube Channel.

“He (Samson) is the guy who won you the World Cup. It’s not somebody who is a non-performer. Three innings went bad, and you forgot everything. That worries me a little. It saddens my heart a little because what’s the guarantee that Vaibhav Suryavanshi would keep doing well?” he added.

Chopra said Samson has age on his side and the selectors as well as the team should back him to the hilt.

“If he (Suryavanshi) doesn’t do well, you have gone towards Prabhsimran Singh, but is that a long-term plan because Sanju is not 35 or 38 years old? Sanju is still a young man. Who gets old at 30 or 31 years? His career has been slightly inconsistent for sure, and you need to take tough decisions at times, but you dropped Sanju from the team itself,” he observed.

India squad for Zimbabwe T20Is: Shreyas Iyer (C), Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma (VC), Ishan Kishan (WK), Shivam Dube, Suryansh Shedge, Rinku Singh, Harsh Dubey, Varun Chakaravarthy, Prince Yadav, Yash Thakur, Ashok Sharma, Mayank Yadav, Prabhsimran Singh (WK)