What Sanju Samson's 67 at Hagley Oval says about his feast-or-famine run

India were wobbling in the middle of their record T20I chase at Hagley Oval, and they still got home by four wickets because Sanju Samson had already done the heavy lifting with 67 off 33 balls.

The truest yardstick for the innings is Samson himself, a batter whose recent India innings have swung between feast and famine, sometimes inside the same week.

Sanju Samson's feast-or-famine run for India

Of his last ten innings for India before this series, four reached fifty and four ended in single figures.

In late September and early October he made three single-figure scores in a row, against Japan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Then came West Indies. On 9 October he made 82 off 41 balls. Two days later he was out for 3.

Put another way, India have had a match-winner and a passenger in the same shirt, and they never know which one is walking out to open. Hagley Oval got the match-winner.

How good is Sanju Samson in T20 cricket?

Very good, and better than the empty plates suggest. Our ratings have him as the 16th-best men's T20 batter in the world, worth 4.26 runs a match more than an average player.

His fifties in this run came at a gallop, and the quick exits are what an opener pays for going hard from the first ball.

Where does the 67 leave India?

India came into the series as our top-rated men's T20 side, with New Zealand sixth of ten, so a win was expected. A record chase is a different matter, and this one needed a batter to take the game away early before the middle order lost its footing.

That is what the feast days buy. On a night when India stumbled halfway through, Samson's 67 had already put enough runs on the board for the lower order to finish the job.

This was Samson at full feast, and it is the innings that justifies sitting through the famine. India should keep him at the top for nights exactly like this one.