“Not yet, I am still like, when I get up in the morning I’m like, ‘has it really happened’. So honestly, that’s the feeling,” Samson said about the T20 World Cup win.
“But I feel that in the coming years with the quality of players we have in our country, this is going to be repeated. The amount of players which are coming up and definitely India is going to do this more and more often.”
Samson was named Player of the Tournament after a historic campaign, scoring 321 runs at a strike rate of nearly 200 in just five innings. Despite not playing initially, he delivered 80-plus scores in the must-win Super Eight match against West Indies, the semi-final against England, and in the final against New Zealand.
Samson said he had been dreaming of helping India win a World Cup.
“You can only dream where you want to go, but you can’t definitely ride the path towards it,” he said. “So my life or my career has been one of the best examples. I definitely wanted to do this a couple of years ago.
“I want to win a World Cup for my country, but it had its own plan, its own script. So, but more like a movie. I enjoyed it.
“As I said before, I wanted to do something like this, then I got pulled out of my journey, and then suddenly, the team wanted me to come and contribute, and that’s when I actually mentally flipped a bit… I think, before that, in the New Zealand series, the focus was all about myself.
“But in the World Cup, the focus is all about the team, what the team requires. And in the Zimbabwe game, right from that moment, everyone wanted me to contribute. I had a role to play.
“So that’s when the shift happened and the confidence that, okay, ‘the team needs you, Sanju’, and let’s do what you can the best. So that’s where everything started from.
“And then I had the experience, I was working mentally. I was working physically, so I knew that I’m ready, and I knew that this is meant for me, so I just had to do what I know best.”
Pace bowler Mohammed Siraj described the triumph as a “miracle” from a personal point of view as he was not part of the initial squad for the tournament and was included only as a replacement for the injured Harshit Rana.
“I was not in the initial squad, then I got it, played a game, and now I have been part of two World Cup-winning squads. I would say it’s a miracle for me,” Siraj said.