• Source:PTI
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Asia Cup 2025: It is not easy to be Sanju Samson these days, especially because he is in danger of losing his spot in the India playing eleven as the team seeks the ideal combination. When the Indian team entered the ICC Cricket Academy Arena for their evening net session ahead of the Asia Cup, Samson was the first to start his solo keeping drills with fielding coach T Dilip, even as others were just about lumbering up.

He was concentration personified and also earned praise for a full-stretched diving catch taken on his right, and then head coach Gautam Gambhir slowly walked up to him. For a full three minutes, Gambhir was immersed in a conversation with the Kerala man, who was listening intently.

However, it seemed Gambhir was discussing the batting more than his keeping drills.

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Jitesh Sharma High On Confidence

If body language is any indicator, then Jitesh Sharma's confident strides after emerging from the club house did say a lot. The RCB keeper looked relaxed and when the batting drills began, he along with Shivam Dube, Tilak Verma and Hardik Pandya took turns to bat with middle-order dashers getting the first go.

The most interesting part was that as the quartet batted, Samson was back in the ground in his batting gear but after some time, he quietly walked away from the melee and was seen sitting behind a palm tree near the dressing room club house.

One by one, vice-captain Shubman Gill, skipper Suryakumar Yadav, Abhishek Sharma, who also rolled his arm over, took turns to bat not once but twice and thrice, but Samson wasn't summoned to bat even once during the whole phase.

Later, he again came near the nets and once it was clear that he won't bat, he casually sat on the ice box. In the meanwhile, Dube, after a round of batting, bowled his medium pacers and again padded up to bat. And Samson was still sitting on that ice box.

Finally, when everybody was done, Samson entered the nets. A net bowler served a half tracker, and he missed. That summed up his day.

Rinku Singh Didn't Bat In Nets

The other person who didn't even bother padding up was Rinku Singh, which is an ample indication that he is not in the scheme of things. Later, as the net session was coming to an end, he padded up and took throwdowns from a support staff, who was not a specialist.

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It would tell you where Rinku currently is in the pecking order.

As the training session went by, it became more and more evident that it won't be possible to fit in Samson and put Tilak at No.6, as Sunil Gavaskar suggested.

Back in the days of Mahendra Singh Dhoni and also on some occasions when Rahul Dravid used to be the coach, there would be a certain kind of intrigue with regards to net session and often, it didn't give indicators as to what might ultimately pan out.

But when it comes to Gambhir, you see what you get, and you get what you see.

Every minute of the net session is an extension of his match strategy and Jitesh won't be batting for an hour two days before the first match if he isn't in the scheme of things.