Sanju Samson-led Rajasthan Royals (RR) defeated MS Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings (CSK) for the second time in the ongoing IPL 2023 on Thursday, April 27 at the Sawai Man Singh stadium in Jaipur and the former India coach was impressed with Samson’s captaincy and compared him to Dhoni.
RR posted 202/5 on the board after Sanju Samson chose to bat first with a major contribution coming from Yashasvi Jaiswal, who made 77, and then Dhruv Jurel (34) and Devdutt Padikkal (27*) finished well for the team.
In reply, CSK only managed 170/6 in 20 overs with Shivam Dube making 52 and Ruturaj Gaikwad making 47. For RR, Adam Zampa took 3/22, while R Ashwin took two wickets, as RR won by 32 runs.
Rajasthan is now top of the table with 10 points. Chennai is down to third, and Gujarat Titans second, as all three teams are equal on points but separated by net run rate.
Sanju Samson Has Similar Qualities To MS Dhoni- Ravi Shastri
Meanwhile, former India coach Ravi Shastri was mightily impressed with Sanju Samson’s leadership qualities and even compared him to MS Dhoni.
“Sanju has similar qualities to MS Dhoni. Little I have seen of him or whatever I have seen of him, he is very calm and composed. Even though he doesn’t show it, he communicates well with his players. I think the more he does the job, the more he will learn with the experience,” Dhoni told ESPNCricinfo.
Shastri says there is an instinctive leadership qualities in Sanju Samson.
“There is an instinctive leader in Sanju. But you could also see he wasn’t happy in the last two games underneath that skin. Even though he didn’t say it, you could make out from the outside that he wasn’t pleased with their batting effort when they could have won the game. At least one game was there for the taking,” said Shastri.
Rajasthan will now face off against Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede Stadium on Sunday.