Sanju Samson on Monday made his way into a unique list on walking in to the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai for the IPL 2021 game against Punjab Kings as a captain.
Rajasthan, ahead of the auction in Chennai in February, released their former skipper Steve Smith and later named Samson as their skipper for the 14th season of the tournament. And on Monday, he surpassed Bhuvneshwar Kumar to stand third in the list of most matches before captaining for the first time in IPL. Samson, with 107 appearances as non-captain in IPL games, stands behind Kieron Pollard (137) and Ravichandran Ashwin (111). Bhuvneshwar stands fourth with 103 such appearances.
Samson won the toss in Rajasthan's IPL 2021 opener and opted to bowl in Mumbai against Punjab.
"We are going to bowl first. We have challenges to face while picking the XI. But I am happy with the players we have. Morris, Stokes, Buttler, Mustafizur are our overseas players. Very excited about the role," said Samson.
Rajasthan had finished bottom of the table last season with 12 points from 14 league games.