What a find for Indian cricket.
Unbelievable what he was able to deliver with the bat in the CWC series just completed in India.
Exceptionally talented natural batsman blessed with power and class.
He will be around entertaining us cricket followers for many more seasons thankfully.
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In three knockout matches at this World Cup now (India's game against West Indies was one too), Samson has not only rewritten the narrative of his own career, providing the most glorious vindication for those who insisted he was always this good, he has achieved something more monumental: he has written his name on this World Cup so brightly, so indelibly, it is in thousand-foot bold lettering, lit up with a million watts, the glow twinkling out into space.
The statistics are irresistible. He has hit 275 runs at a strike rate of 199 in the "knockouts". For India, the next-highest scorer through this stretch is Ishan Kishan, with a tally of 103 - Samson's aggregate a 167% improvement on the next best. Though he has played only five innings this World Cup having mostly returned in the Super Eight, he is third on the tournament's overall run chart, with 321 runs. To find another batter who has played five or fewer innings, you have to go down to No. 27 on this list.
There's more impressive stuff coming. Taking only semi-finals and finals aggregates, no one has ever struck more than Samson at any World Cup, his 178 runs a 23% improvement on the next highest semis+finals scorer - Virat Kohli in 2014. And the real killer is:
This puts Samson in all-time great World Cup territory. There has almost inarguably never been knockouts batting this relentlessly breathtaking in this format. Having not been in the XI to begin the tournament, Samson has ended it as the benchmark: the ideal to which future World Cup batters will aspire.