Kishan, Samson, and a night that chose its own hero

It was meant to be Sanju Samson's evening. The city had decided that much well before the teams arrived. The anticipation was building through the week for Samson's first international in his hometown. It was a rare alignment of timing and opportunity, and everything around the ground suggested that the night would bend around him.

Instead, it bent towards Ishan Kishan.

Kishan smashed his maiden T20I hundred, a 42-ball statement that swallowed the evening whole. It came fast, clean and without pause, the kind of innings that leaves no room for shared spotlight. The applause from the crowd followed the shots and the century celebration, even if the heart of it all had been tuned for someone else.

The shift was unmistakable by the time the game ended. After Suryakumar Yadav collected the series trophy, he walked towards the group assembled behind the "Winners" board, paused and handed the trophy to Kishan.

It was a poignant moment, heavy with subtext. Since MS Dhoni first began the habit, the trophy has often been passed on to the newest kid on the block. Virat Kohli carried it forward. Rohit Sharma did the same.

But Kishan wasn't new. And that was the point.

Having made his international debut in March 2021, Kishan had done this before. He had held the trophy aloft for his team. Kohli was captain then. Four years on, in a different era of Indian cricket, Kishan was still here, holding the trophy not like a prodigy being welcomed, but like a player being let back in. It felt like a reintegration, a second beginning.

It wasn't that Kishan had gone nowhere in the years between. He had simply fallen out of step with time. In December 2023, Kishan went to South Africa as India's Test wicketkeeper but withdrew from the squad citing personal reasons. What followed was a difficult stretch: conversations around domestic cricket, availability, intent. There were ill-timed injuries. There was silence.

Ironically, it was domestic cricket that pulled him back to the national fold. Leading Jharkhand to their maiden Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy title, Kishan piled on 517 runs in 10 innings, finishing as the tournament's highest run-getter. The volume was impossible to ignore.

The signs came quickly once he was back in India colours. A 76 off 32 balls in Nagpur. A sharp 28 off 13 in Guwahati. And then this. A hundred in Thiruvananthapuram, in a match that had been framed around someone else.

It may feel like Kishan stole the thunder. On a night built for Sanju Samson, Kishan took the moment and ran with it. Not because it was owed but because he was ready when the chance finally arrived.

As Kishan stood in the middle of the group, holding the trophy aloft on behalf of the team, Samson remained on the fringes of the frame, slightly away from the centre of the team photo, much like he had been through the evening itself.

When Samson walked out to open, greeted by a reception reserved only for him on the night, the anticipation was ripe. His first international match at home had been a long time coming but when Lockie Ferguson cranked up the pace, old discomforts surfaced and he was eventually caught in the third man region.

Kishan, who replaced him in the middle, responded to the challenge differently. The first ball he faced was a full toss on the pads from Ferguson. He didn't force it. He tapped it to midwicket and took a breath. In fact, he scored just one run off his first five balls. When Ferguson returned and tried rolling his fingers over the ball, Kishan was ready. The slower ones went: one threaded through the infield, another lifted cleanly over it.

Where Samson had been rushed, Kishan looked unhurried, matching Abhishek Sharma swing for swing, especially against spin. Anything fractionally short disappeared. Anything tossed up was met with a golf swing.

The irony was not lost on anyone. Two wicketkeeper-batters with similar skill sets and competing for the same space on the eve of a World Cup at home. The stage, cruelly, had been set for someone else.

As the match wore on, Kishan was calling the shots as the wicketkeeper, even setting the fields. Samson, the incumbent wicketkeeper, drifted wider, first to cover, then deeper, gradually moving away from the centre of the action.

When the match ended, Samson was the last to walk towards the middle, almost trudging, the applause around him now for someone else. It was a quiet image, one that carried its own weight.

In a way, the night was about Sanju Samson too. Not because he seized it, but because he had to watch it unfold from the edges. On an evening meant for him, he stood witness to another man's return and to the time-tested truth that timing, and not talent, shapes destinies.