The sea of yellow that follows Chennai Super Kings around the country during the IPL also has specks of blue, usually in the shape of the word Dhoni and the number 7.

A father and son walking down Wallajah Road to get to Chepauk for CSK's pre-season event a week ago wore these colours. But there was one major difference. On the boy's back was the word Samson and the number 11. Shivam Dube had to win a World Cup for CSK to market his jersey.

Plenty of India players cultivate a passionate fan base. They get ordinary people to fall hopelessly in love with them, by scoring mountains of runs or important runs or last-man-standing runs or, thanks almost exclusively to Jasprit Bumrah, breaking stumps.

Sanju Samson hadn't done a whole lot in the game until the first week of March in 2026. There were those three centuries for India in bilateral games. A run to the IPL final in 2022. And a reputation of starting the season strong but losing momentum as it goes on. Still he's always had a line to the masses.

Social media plays its part. The cricketers themselves don't have ties to it, but there is an entire machinery - fuelled by interview clips, highlight reels, candid shots and expert quotes - built to keep them in the conversation. Sometimes it feels artificial. Samson's fandom - both on and offline - feels tribal.

He's from Kerala, a state that hasn't had many India players. All he had to do was get picked, and it would be party time. The call-up came in 2014. Samson was still in college. His classmates joined in the celebrations, singing and dancing and shedding "aanandha kanneer" [tears of joy].

But he couldn't cut it. Not right away. Somebody else always seemed to take his spot. It happened on the day of the 2024 T20 World Cup final. Then again in the lead up to the 2026 T20 World Cup, all of which made the Samsonites double down, and they were already pretty fierce. Four years ago, India played a T20I against South Africa at his home ground in Thiruvananthapuram. He wasn't part of the squad but that didn't matter to the crowd that greeted the team at the airport. They screamed for him. Only him. Suryakumar Yadav even got into the spirit of the occasion, pulling up a picture of Samson on his phone and turning it towards the cameras.

All of this is about to descend on Chennai. There are five or six daily trains that connect Kerala with the city. The buses are even more frequent. Chepauk on Saturday is going to be something else. Particularly after the COVID years, there's been a routine of CSK players coming onto the field with entry music. One opposition captain was given the same treatment as well. In May 2024, Samson, when he was Rajasthan Royals captain, walked out to bat with the Illuminati song from the movie Avesham playing on the speakers, and the crowd went wild. Having switched sides, he became eligible for a franchise tradition and was given the nickname "Chetta".

The connection Chennai has formed with Samson is difficult to explain. But it's there. In 2022, it drove 2000 people into the ground to watch him play an India A game. They would have seen him since he was 17, heard stories of how he had turned up for RR trials, impressed Rahul Dravid on the spot and then went on to take on opponents twice his age. Prodigies enjoy special status here. And he feels weirdly accessible.

Ahead of the IPL playoffs in 2024, Samson wound up at Marina beach and a bunch of policemen took a video with him that ended up on local news channels. More recently, after winning the T20 World Cup, he was spotted in a tea shop by the roadside in Kerala. When asked about it at the India Today conclave, he said the title was a dream come true so the first thing he wanted to do was go home and see his parents and then see the people with whom he had come up playing his cricket. This is the other type of person that Chennai falls for. It's why their superstar keeps getting cast in mild-mannered roles. Samson is a Rajinikanth fan too. In 2023, he ducked out on his own to watch

Jailer in Ireland.

There is a sense of destiny fulfilled in Samson representing CSK. And a box ticked. There's at least one person in the squad now who speaks Tamil. "Paakumbothellam oru kootama irukkum, front-la. Mahi bhai-kku inga anju peru, inga pathu peru. Seri ippadiyellam paatha pathathu. Naan thaniya thaan paakanum."

That was Samson talking just after CSK confirmed that they were trading him in, about how he wanted to meet MS Dhoni, except he always had a crowd around him. So Samson decided to wait for a better opportunity. Now the two of them share a dressing room and, if all goes as CSK are planning, there may be more.

The sixes. The secrecy. The quips. The titles. The story about milk. The helmet punches. The "definitely not". The sound of the ball off his bat. The sound of the crowd as he walks in. Dhoni has been the face, body, heart and soul of CSK, which has been great for the past 18 years. But every time they've tried to find a successor, it hasn't worked out.

Ravindra Jadeja's captaincy lasted mere weeks. Ruturaj Gaikwad is yet to take them to the playoffs. Now Dhoni isn't - and hasn't - held either of these players back. In fact, he has helped groom them for higher honours. He has also never asked fans to cheer for CSK wickets. It just happens. He never wanted to be bigger than the team. It just happened. Following someone like that is only possible by someone else like that.

Someone who is good under pressure. Samson had two innings' grace before he was facing a knockout situation in his first-ever ICC event and he went 97 not out, 89 and 89.

Someone who sets the pulse racing. A part of Samson's allure is in playing difficult shots, and in those moments what we know about cricket and what we know about the world are at odds with what he can make happen. This is why consistency is an issue for him and why he appears flaky when he gets out. The upside of hitting Jofra Archer for a six over point in Mumbai comes with the downside of playing across the line to Nandre Burger and getting bowled in Guwahati. Both of those things stick in the mind, though. Samson is working towards being inevitable. But he has always been memorable.

Someone who commands the respect of his peers. Abhishek Sharma, who was having a tough time figuring out his tempo in the blinding lights of a T20 World Cup, took Samson's advice to throttle down against Glenn Phillips in the final, and the rest is history.

Someone who is larger than life but doesn't buy into it. Samson was sent a 3D printed image of himself, immortalised as he was when he hit the winning runs against West Indies last month, down on his knees, looking up at the sky and giving thanks. He twirled it around in his hands for a couple of seconds and then went on to do other things.

The need to bring this someone in sooner rather than later was so acute that the CSK management was willing to part ways with the man who won them their last IPL title. Samson may or may not be able to live up to these expectations. But a career of ups and downs has equipped him to take them on at least.

The first home game he will play in IPL 2026 has coincided with a copyright ban, preventing the stadium DJ from playing some of the songs he usually does. But maybe that's an opportunity for his fans themselves to clear their throats and go "Chettan vannalley. Setta cheiya vannalley. Petta thullaan vannalley. Vettaiyan alley. [Chettan is here. He is here to play. He is here rock the place. Because he is the hunter].