Cricket is a glitchy simulator. We keep hitting "refresh" on the Indian roster, hoping for a stable build, but all we get is legacy code and a UI that hasn't changed since 2011. Now, with Abhishek Sharma sidelined for the Namibia clash, the selection committee is staring at a blue screen of death.
Enter Krishnamachari Srikkanth. The man is a human caps-lock key. He’s the guy at the back of the Apple Store yelling that the Newton was a better product than the iPad. And honestly? His latest rant about Sanju Samson is the most honest piece of tech support we’ve had in years.
"Sanju Samson hasn’t done anything," Srikkanth barked recently. It’s a brutal assessment. It’s the kind of thing you say about a startup that’s burned through $50 million in VC funding and still hasn’t moved past a "Coming Soon" landing page. Samson is the ultimate "Next Big Thing" that stayed in beta for a decade. He has the aesthetics. He has the highlight reel. But when it’s time to ship the product, the build fails.
The absence of Abhishek Sharma—the high-speed, low-latency opener everyone actually wants to use—has left a hole in the top order. You’d think the logical move is to slide Samson in, give him another "final" chance, and pray he doesn't crash. But Srikkanth isn't interested in logical updates. He wants an out-of-the-box fix. He wants to rewire the motherboard because he’s tired of the software hanging every time the pressure spikes.
The friction here isn't just about runs. It’s about the cost of potential. In the tech world, we call this the "Sunken Cost Fallacy." You’ve invested so much time into a specific architecture that you’re terrified to scrap it, even when the throughput is zero. Samson is that architecture. Every time he walks to the crease, the fans act like they’re waiting for a delayed OS update. This time, it’ll be different. This time, the bugs are fixed. This time, the battery life will actually last.
It never does.
Srikkanth’s proposal isn’t just about Namibia. Let’s be real: Namibia is a stress test. It’s the game where you should be able to run your heaviest apps without the fans spinning up. If you can’t trust your backup keeper-batsman to perform against a team that’s essentially a group of very talented hobbyists, why is he even in the hardware stack?
The "out-of-the-box" fix Srikkanth is hinting at involves a radical reshuffle. It’s about moving pieces that aren't supposed to move. Maybe it’s promoting a bowling all-rounder. Maybe it’s playing with one less specialist and banking on a "good enough" utility player. It’s the equivalent of removing the headphone jack—it makes everyone angry, it feels unnecessary, but the designers swear it’s the only way forward.
We spend so much time talking about "intent." It’s a buzzword that’s lost all meaning, like "synergy" or "cloud-native." Srikkanth doesn't care about intent. He wants a deliverable. He wants a player who doesn’t just look good in the promotional renders but actually works when you take him out of the box.
The Indian team management is currently stuck in a boardroom meeting, staring at a whiteboard covered in desperate scribbles. They have Abhishek Sharma’s spot to fill and a limited inventory of parts. Samson is sitting right there, looking like a sleek, overpriced peripheral that might disconnect at any moment.
Srikkanth is the only one willing to say that the device is defective. He’s not interested in the "Sanju Samson Experience." He’s looking at the raw data, and the data says 404 Not Found.
So, what’s the fix? Do you stick with the bug-ridden legacy player because he’s "due" for a patch? Or do you listen to the guy who wants to tear the whole thing down and start over with a weird, untested configuration?
Namibia isn't the problem. The problem is that the Indian cricket ecosystem is addicted to the promise of what a player could be, rather than what they actually are. We’re all just beta testers for a product that refuses to go gold.
How many more system failures does it take before we realize the hardware just isn't compatible with the modern game?