What went wrong with Yuvraj Singh

But in the mid-’90s,the maidan-regulars made an exception — unbelievable for a batsman from north India. As a 14-year-old day-scholar from Chandigarh at his father Yograj Singh’s playing-days mate Dilip Vengsarkar’s academy at Azad maidan,Yuvraj Singh shattered a few myths. He belied that stereotypical image of batsmen from the North. He wasn’t dismissed as another air-head slogger but was seen as a technically perfect batsman blessed with timing with a knack for hitting big sixes.

The tales about his tall hits that sailed over the palm trees lining the maidan and landed threateningly close to the crowd of evening commuters heading home,got exaggerated after every successive narration. “Ball ko limbu bana deta hai (He turns cricket balls into lemons),” they said,describing the ball’s diminishing dimension when on the tip of the parabola that Yuvraj’s towering sixes drew.

That was the time when the young left-hander was seen as someone the ‘cricket mothers’ crowding the maidans wanted their sons to grow up to be. Their desire was not misplaced as the batting prodigy went on to wear India blues two months before his 19th birthday. Suddenly,every kid wanted to be Yuvraj.

But a decade later,Yuvraj’s image has taken a back flip. Whispers in the BCCI corridors say that Yuvraj is being seen as a negative influence on the youngsters in the team (apparently that’s what the manager for the disastrous World T20 in South Africa has conveyed to the BCCI). It’s been all downhill for Yuvraj this year. 2010 has seen him injured,out of shape,struggling to score runs,losing King’s XI Punjab’s captaincy and eventually,getting dropped from the ODI team because of loss of form.

From being Indian cricket’s poster boy,in this season of IPL exposes,he’s become the face of the game’s decadence that has turned bubbly teenagers into lazy millionaires overnight. IPL cricket’s ugly underbelly and the weight around Yuvraj’s girth are spoken of in the same breath. And no piece of gossip about late-night parties and Bollywood’s proximity with cricketers is ever without his name.

SO where did it all go wrong for the boy who used to turn cricket balls into lemons? It’s the curious case of a gifted cricketer who somehow lost his way. Yuvraj’s former coaches,current friends,ex-selectors and team mates from the past reluctantly give reasons for Yuvraj going adrift.

Team India coach during Yuvraj’s heady early years in international cricket,John Wright,is pained at his ward’s transformation. “I could see that he is not his same confident self who would hit the ball down the ground. He is the kind of cricketer who plays really well when he is in a happy environment. And he needs to have a great flow to score runs consistently. Yuvraj always had that flow and he enjoys his cricket. It’s just that he needs to be encouraged and treated with care,” he says.

For some years now things haven’t gone the way Yuvraj would have liked. Injuries and loss of form have resulted in a few subtle changes in hierarchy in the Indian dressing room. Two men who cemented their place in the Indian side after Yuvraj—Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir—replaced him as vice-captain. This may seem like an insignificant development but not for the proud cricketer who was once seen as a future India captain.

His sulk because of the Team India demotion went unnoticed,but when he was sacked as the King’s XI captain at the start of IPL III,the hurt became tough to hide. Sources in the team say that the life of the dressing room who still plays pranks and mimics coaches and officials does get grumpy when things don’t go his way. Says Sourav Ganguly,his first international captain,“He hasn’t been his usual self for the last one year. Maybe injury is one of the reasons,but he should concentrate more on fitness.” Ganguly wasn’t quite the fastest mover while fielding at mid-on for Team India when Yuvraj at point was a virtual wall. Times certainly have changed.

During the IPL Yuvraj was mostly at mid-on or patrolling the fence,the virtual safe haven for slow movers or those with butter fingers. When the former Pakistan captain Intikhab Alam,who had a couple of stints as Punjab coach,saw the sight of an overweight Yuvraj fielding far away from this favourite position,he was shocked. “He didn’t resemble the boy that I cherished watching. He was a hard-working,gifted cricketer. I used to have these lengthy team talks where I used to stress the importance of focus. One should enjoy himself by unwinding at a party but not at the cost of affecting his game the next day,” he says.

To be fair to Yuvraj,injuries,too,have been responsible for the gradual dip in form and fitness. Besides his wrist injury,he has an old knee problem. As Anshuman Gaekwad says,Yuvraj no longer stretches to reach the ball,doesn’t lean into his stroke or use the breadth of the crease to move around play square of the wicket — the three stand-out features of his batting that he first saw in 2000 as India coach. “The reason could be his knee,” he says.

Kiran More was the chairman of the national selection committee when the injury happened during the 2006 Champions Trophy. It was a freak accident when Yuvraj twisted his leg while playing kho kho—the game that used be part of Team India’s warm up drill. More says Yuvraj should have taken some time off and returned only when he was 100 per cent fit. But so competitive and complicated was India’s middle-order equation during the period that an injury sabbatical could have meant kissing goodbye to the next India outing.

When you are a middle-order batsman rubbing shoulders with the likes of Tendulkar,Dravid,Ganguly and Laxman in the dressing room,you can’t be called paranoid if you think about job security. So,Yuvraj opted for a knee cast and resorted to alternative medicine to avoid surgery. He remained an asset in the shorter version but what hurt him more was being perpetually on the threshold of playing XI in Tests. More talks about an incident that conveys his desperation to be there. “He once came to me saying that he wants to be a Test opener. He was ill-advised by someone in the team. I made him understand that the move could be counter productive,” he says.

Not becoming a Test team regular was probably the first cricketing setback for the wonder boy with a golden touch. Maybe,for the first time in his life,he couldn’t achieve a goal that the world set for him. The resultant snide remarks about him being a one-day wonder hurt him. His first Ranji team skipper Vikram Rathore speaks about the mindset of the child prodigy who wasn’t used to being criticised. “People might feel that Yuvraj is very casual towards cricket,but that’s untrue. He gets bothered with adverse remarks and it shows on his performances,” he says.

Punjab team senior Pankaj Dharmani says the lack of a big Test score after the long-awaited longer version debut,too,had affected him. “Whatever chances he got,he could not convert them into huge scores. That shattered his confidence. Still he should have scored more runs than he has. It is unfortunate that in 10 years,he has not played even 50 Tests while he has played 250 ODIs,” he says.

It is tough to find many around Chandigarh who don’t sugarcoat their criticism about Yuvraj. One-time India pacer Harvinder Singh and Yuvraj go back a long way and maybe that’s the reason he doesn’t mince words. They knew each other since the time they played age-group cricket for Punjab. “He always lacked the patience to do well in Test cricket. And as far as his fitness goes,he has been very casual and non-committal. He should learn from players like Tendulkar,Dravid,Kumble,Ponting and Laxman,who have played cricket for over 15-20 years and are so fit,” he says.

Strangely,it is this casualness (also read as cool depending on the year you were born) that has made him a big draw with the youngsters in the team. For Team India’s brat pack — the T20 generation cricketers like Rohit Sharma,Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja—being Yuvraj is a tempting option. He has big cars,massive endorsement deals and Bollywood phone numbers without being a Test regular. There are a few examples in the Indian dressing room of players sacrificing worldly pleasures and spending their entire youth in the single-minded pursuit of cricketing excellence,but when short cuts were available to the youngsters,Yuvraj included,attempting the hard yards seemed a sheer waste of time. With the establishment focusing on a format where limited skills were enough to make a quick million and where modest players could match wits with masters,long hours at nets and years of dedication were seen as traits of losers.

Brand Yuvraj took a serious beating with the emergence of Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Same age,a cleaner image and more success on the field saw Dhoni overtake Yuvraj despite the late start. When Percept D’ Mark signed Yuvraj in 2000,it was seen as a coup of sorts. “Our main reason was his potential and connectivity to young audience. The Indian team had gone towards youth at that time and our core concern was sporting talent,” says Manuj Agarwal,Chief Financial Officer of Percept D’ Mark. But seven years later they ended the contract. “One should understand that a player’s brand is as good as his form. Yuvraj’s performance has gone down in the past few years and so has the brand value,” he says.

Agarwal adds,“After M S Dhoni,Yuvraj was destined to be the number two brand.” The boy from Ranchi could force kids to drink milk,adults to buy colas,college-goers to buy bikes and even charm housewives. Plus,on the field,he can turn cricket balls into lemons too.

(Inputs by Shalini Gupta,Nitin Sharma)