I actually met Sanju Samson the first time when he was 14. He was playing for a club in Trivandrum and people at the nets seemed impressed. I kept an eye on him and followed his early career. I met him and his father when he was still in high school. So I've really seen and followed his career from the very beginning and I remain a huge, huge fan of his. I really think he is an exceptional talent.

So for all of these reasons, it's more than just the pride that every Keralite shares in him. It also helps that I am his MP and therefore he is my constituent. I have extra pride that somebody from my constituency has done well enough to play for India from the under-19 days. He has excelled for Kerala in all three formats. He just has not had the luck that he deserves. I mean he got a century in an ODI, got left out of the next ODI, you know, that kind of thing

He's never really been given a long enough chance to prove his worth, but I do think that on the whole, and in many ways, the experiences he's had have led him finally to this very sublime innings. I've seen his centuries on television of course - I don't often have the time to go and see the matches live. But, this one, I thought, was exceptional because there was no sense of doubt, no risk taking - it was a chanceless innings. There was an extraordinary stillness about him that I noticed from the first ball which wasn't there in some of his earlier knocks.

This is a young man who's had his confidence battered by various things - being pushed down the order early on to accommodate (Shubman) Gill and being pushed up again, then being judged by some failures. You could sense a tentativeness in his batting in some of the earlier matches but somehow he seemed to have overcome all that yesterday. Even on screen you could sense there was a complete mental and physical stillness to the guy.

He anchored in his core and played with a truly impressive confidence. So I think that we have seen the best of Sanju in that innings. I was obviously hoping he would get to the 100 mark. I kept calculating: when there were 100 runs needed to win, he had 50 more to make but somehow he never quite got there. Still, I think this 97* is right up there amongst not only his finest innings but one of the finest innings we have seen an Indian player play in a T20I.

The thing about Sanju is that there has always been this incredible talent. You often feel that some of the strokes are absolutely sublime, really elegant and almost poetic. To watch some of the strokes are incredible - I mean improbable. A backfoot cover drive off a really fast delivery going straight into the fence before a fielder can even stir. You saw some of those yesterday and yet there was no sense of the slightest risk being taken.

Very often with Sanju you catch your breath saying 'great shot' but 'my god, the next time he tries that he might be caught'... that kind of thing. You never had that feeling yesterday. That's what I meant by stillness. Not only was it chanceless, but there was simply nothing excessively flamboyant, dangerous, risky or chancy about a single stroke. There was something almost perfect about that innings which I think more serious analysts can go with a video and reconstruct it or deconstruct it.

I think they will agree with me that when I watched it I was truly struck by how incredibly composed that innings was. As the innings evolved, even before he got to 50, I had the sense that this was going to be a monumental knock. I know that sounds very easy to say after it happened but I didn't want to state it before for fear of jinxing. But I had this feeling all along and it's true. It just came through that way and after a while I stopped worrying. With Sanju there's always a little bit of a worry for a person like me who feels emotionally invested in his success.