Yuvraj Singh, the player-of-the-tournament in India’s triumphant 2011 World Cup campaign, announced his retirment from the game here on Monday. Yuvraj has featured in 23 domestic seasons and will be remembered as one of the most skilful white-ball cricketers.
The architect of India’s two ICC titles over the last decade, Yuvraj hopes to continue plying his trade in franchise overseas leagues for the next few years.
“I want to play T20 cricket. At this age I can manage to play some kind of fun cricket. It’s been too stressful just thinking about my international career, performing in big tournaments like the IPL,” Yuvraj said at an interaction with the media after an emotional retirement speech in the presence of his family.
“Now I would like to enjoy myself. With BCCI’s permission, I would like to go and play (in overseas leagues). It’s been a very long and hard journey and I think I deserve that.”
Yuvraj admitted that having consulted his friends and mentors, he had decided that the 2019 IPL, where he played a limited role in Mumbai Indians’ road to victory, would be his last.
Declining the BCCI offer
The southpaw revealed that he declined the “farewell game” offer last year, instead making himself available for selection.
“I was told that if you are not able to pass the Yo-Yo test, I would get a farewell game. I did not tell anyone in the BCCI that I have to play the last match,” he said.
“If I was good enough, I would have retired on the ground. I don’t like to ask for a game, I have never played the game with that mindset, so I told them I don’t want a farewell game, if I don’t clear the Yo-Yo test, I will quietly head back home. I cleared the test and then, rest is not my call.”
Note to youngsters
Yuvraj signed off with a word of advice for youngsters. “I see a lot of younger guys getting a lot of money in IPL. Sometime they are getting money a bit too easily, without really appreciating it,” he said.
“When you talk to them, they don’t listen. Honestly, 20 years ago, I also did not listen. It’s a learning process, they will learn themselves. It is important that they focus on cricket and on playing for India.”
Top performance
That performance against England took Yuvraj on top of the pile of fastest fifties in a T20I match, scoring 50 in just 12 balls, a record that has stood the test of time.
As time passed, Yuvraj became an established middle-order linchpin for the Indian team, and a man with a golden arm too.
A testimony of his accomplished all-round abilities was the 2011 50-over World Cup, where Yuvraj became the first all-rounder to score 300-plus runs and take 15 wickets in a single edition of the tournament.
The feat included four MoM awards and Man-Of-The-Tournament for the 362 runs and 15 wickets.
“Winning the 2011 World Cup, being man of the series, four MoM awards was all like a dream, which was followed with a harsh reality of getting diagnosed with cancer,” reminisced Yuvraj.
“All this happened so quickly and that too when I was at the peak of my career. It was like touching the sky and then falling down at light speed and hitting the ground hard. All this happened so quickly,” he said.
“I can’t possibly explain the support of my family and friends who stood by me, like my pillars of strength and courage,” added an emotional Yuvraj.
Ganguly, Dhoni as favourite captains
He rated Sourav Ganguly, under whom he flourished, and Mahendra Singh Dhoni as his favourite captains, and picked Sri Lankan spin wizard Muttiah Muralitharan and Australian pace great Glenn McGrath as the toughest bowlers he faced in his career.
Yuvraj, a fighter to the core even off the field, battled all odds to return to cricket after being successfully cured of a rare germ cell tumour through treatment in the United States.
“This was probably the most difficult time in my cricket career, then the 2014 T20 World Cup final against Sri Lanka when I laboured to 11 off 21 balls. It was so shattering that I felt my career was all but over, everyone wrote me off too. But I never stopped believing in myself,” remarked Yuvraj.
“I felt most pressurised when I was making a comeback after having recovered from cancer because that was the time when everyone thought that I may not be the same player again and I had to prove them wrong,” he said.
(with inputs from PTI)
