Cricket: Samson’s 57 and Reddy’s 3/24 Power India to Series Win Over Afghanistan

NEW DELHI — Twenty-two balls. That was all Sanju Samson needed to settle the series.

India defeated Afghanistan by seven wickets in the second T20I at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Tuesday, clinching the three-match rubber 2-0 with a game to spare. But the evening belonged to a wicketkeeper-batsman who has spent the better part of his international career waiting for moments like this, and took this one with four sixes and seven fours off 22 deliveries before most of the crowd had finished their first drink.

Samson’s 57 broke the spine of a chase that looked merely comfortable before he walked in and made it academic. He and Abhishek Sharma built 88 runs in 6.2 overs at the top of the order, wresting the equation from Afghanistan before Rashid Khan had any opportunity to rewrite it. Yahoo Sports reported that when Abhishek fell for 39 off 19 balls, India still needed 75 from 82 with seven wickets in hand. The outcome was never in doubt.

Earlier, Nitish Kumar Reddy had set the tone. The 21-year-old all-rounder recovered from an expensive opening over, where Afghanistan’s batting had found enough width to score freely, and finished with figures of 3 for 24 to earn the Player of the Match award for a second successive evening. Arshdeep Singh removed Rahmanullah Gurbaz for a golden duck in the second over, giving the seam attack immediate control, and Afghanistan never produced a partnership significant enough to push their total beyond 160.

Ibrahim Zadran anchored the innings with 37, keeping Afghanistan in sight of a competitive total through patient accumulation. Rashid Khan provided the one genuine burst of late-order acceleration: 28 off 16 deliveries, before Reddy’s second wicket ended the resistance. Afghanistan closed on 159 for eight, a total that on a different night against a more conservative batting side might have stretched into genuine contest.

This batting side is not conservative.

Samson began the way he has begun the best innings of his career: one look around the field, an acknowledgment of the placings, then an immediate rearrangement of whatever the bowling plan happened to be. The first boundary arrived on the second ball of the innings. By the sixth delivery he had four. Abhishek at the other end was playing the same game from a different instinct. Where Samson sees the gap and places, Abhishek manufactures angles that the field has no answer for. When the two found themselves in rhythm for six overs, Afghanistan’s bowlers were reduced to hoping someone dropped a catch.

No one did. The 88-run stand, ended when Abhishek was caught sweeping off a well-disguised slower ball, came at 14 runs per over. India needed 75 from 82 balls when it broke. Shreyas Iyer, arriving at four, finished unbeaten on 12, his presence at the crease more a statement about batting depth than about necessity. India reached the target in 14.5 overs with 31 balls to spare, on a delivery that barely registered in the context of what had come before.

Rashid Khan collected three wickets for 36, a bowling return that would have changed most T20I chases. Here it did not, because Samson had already moved the match to its conclusion before Rashid even came into the attack. The Afghan leg-spinner is one of the best limited-overs bowlers in world cricket; on this evidence, he would benefit from bowling earlier in the powerplay, before India’s openers can settle, rather than arriving in the seventh over into batting already in flow.

Reddy’s bowling trajectory this series is worth following independently of the match result. Playing in the all-rounder’s role that no Indian cricketer has consistently filled since Hardik Pandya’s injury-interrupted 2025, he took three wickets in both T20Is without exceeding 24 runs in either match. His economy in the first game was flattered by conditions; his control in the second was not. The lines were different, more off-stump and fuller, with one bouncer used deliberately to break Rashid’s rhythm, and the returns suggest a cricketer learning to adjust mid-series rather than repeat a formula.

India’s first T20I win on Sunday had raised the question of whether Afghanistan’s batting would respond differently once carrying a series deficit. Tuesday’s answer was that the top order can respond, but the late-innings acceleration requires Rashid Khan to be effective, and Reddy disrupted that plan both nights.

India’s eighth Women’s Asia Cup title last week placed the women’s squad on a flight to Aichi for the Asian Games. The men’s side, now with the series secured, faces a dead rubber on Friday that carries no bilateral pressure. Whether that match becomes a platform for fringe squad members or a final preparation session before the 2027 cycle begins will define its meaning more than the scoreline.

Afghanistan arrive at that third match with questions to answer: whether the batting order should be restructured to maximise Rashid’s impact, and whether the absence of a left-arm pace option explains why India’s openers have faced so little swing across both games. The answers are not obvious.

What is obvious is that India, without at least three regulars from their first-choice configuration, had what this series required. Samson, with 22 balls, made that clear.