India, March 2 -- Sanju Samson's unbeaten 97 at Eden Gardens did not feel like a chase so much as a sustained negotiation with entropy. In a virtual knockout, with a mountain of 196 to scale and the inning perpetually threatening to fracture as its seams, Samson made the most counterintuitive choice available to a modern T20 batter under siege: he chose to stay. Not the opening blaze. Not the mid-inning cameo that platters only the scorer. Instead, sustained dominion - ball after ball, phase after phase - until the match yielded to him on his own terms.

Which is precisely why the question refuses to die quietly. Did Samson produce the greatest T20 World Cup innings ever played by an Indian? It is tempting to settle it in the afterglow, b...