Yuvraj Singh is hailed as the one of the finest white-ball players to play the sport, a match-winner who proved it at the biggest stage — playing a key role in India’s T20I and ODI World Cup triumphs under MS Dhoni. But the unfortunate diagnosis of lung cancer after the 2011 World Cup saw his cricket career drift away slowly, until he decided to retire in June 2019 after being repeatedly overlooked.
Yuvraj had made a remarkable recovery to return to the team in December 2012, but he wasn’t picked for the 2013 Champions Trophy. He didn’t give up and made another comeback bid after Dhoni passed on the captaincy baton to Virat Kohli.
He found a place in the 2017 Champions Trophy squad but didn’t have a tournament to remember, leading to his ouster from the team.
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While there is common belief that Yuvraj didn’t have the same fitness levels after the 2011 World Cup, former India batter Robin Uthappa told the story as he saw it, while appearing in an interview on ‘Lallantop‘.
“Virat’s style of captaincy was different to the extent that you needed to reach his level. Whether it was fitness, whether it was eating habits, whether it was listening, agreeing, all of that had to happen at that standard,” said Uthappa while talking about Virat’s captaincy, before coming to Yuvraj’s exclusion from the team.
“There are two different types of leaders. There are leaders who say this is the standard needed and there are leaders who say ‘I will meet you there and elevate you to the standards I need you to be at’. Both work and both get the results, but the impact on the personnel will be different. One will value a lot, and the exclusive one will feel let down a lot.”
To explain how things changed under Kohli’s leadership era, Uthappa explained citing the story of Yuvraj post his recovery from cancer.
“Take Yuvi Pa’s instance. The man beat cancer, and he is trying to come back into the international side. He is the man who won us a World Cup, won us two World Cups for that matter, along with the other players, but played an integral role in helping us win. Then, for such a player, when you become captain, you say his lung capacity has diminished. You had been with him when you had seen him struggle,” said Uthappa, who played 46 ODIs and 13 T20Is for India.
“Nobody has told me this, I observe things,” Uthappa, who was Yuvraj’s teammate in the 2007 T20 World Cup-winning squad, added.
“You have seen him struggle…yes, you have to maintain a level of standard, but there are always exceptions to the rule. Here is a man who deserves to be an exception because he is not just beaten and won you tournaments, but he has beaten cancer. He has beaten the hardest challenge in life in that sense,” the 39-year-old Uthappa said.
He revealed that Yuvraj asked for certain concessions in the levels of fitness test, but his request was denied.
“So when Yuvi requested for that two-point deduction (in the fitness test), he didn’t get it. Then he did the test because he was outside the team and they weren’t taking him in. He passed the fitness test, came into the team, but had a lean tournament. (They) took him out totally, never entertained him after that. Whoever was in the leadership group, didn’t entertain him. That time Virat was the leader and it went according to him due to his strong personality,” Uthappa said.
Concluding on the topic, Uthappa added: “I haven’t played under Virat as a captain very much. But Virat as a captain, he was very ‘my way or the highway’ kind of a captain. It’s not like these guys aren’t also like that, but how you treat your team, how you treat your personnel, because it is not just about results.”