| Yuvraj Singh, now the prince of misfortune |
| Sunday, 15 August 2010 21:12 |
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It's got to a point where one can only sympathize. Yuvraj Singh, once the majestic prince of all he surveyed in the limited-overs formats, a dazzling exhibitionist of power, placement and prime-time assault, is going through the worst phase of his career.
A bizarre jumble of bad form, injury, questionable attitude and plain ill-luck is seeing one of India's rare talents wasting away with the World Cup in sight. Since the last Champions Trophy, it has been a long year of discontent and denial, but in Sri Lanka he has been hounded by gnawing misfortune, with first flu and now dengue fever laying him low. Will someone please turn it around for Yuvraj?
The decline has been more pronounced over the past 12 months but it all began in Mohali in 2006, again before a Champions Trophy game, when a pointless session of kho-kho saw Yuvraj twisting his knee. India haven't played kho-kho since, and Yuvraj hasn't been the same player. It took him a long time to come out of the injury, the knee still awaits surgery, but it was again the same tournament, and another innocuous practice session at a university ground in Johannesburg last year, which saw him fracture a finger. It has been all downhill from there.
Sometimes it's the knee, sometimes it's the shoulder, sometimes another finger or a wrist. Since last September, he has pulled out of three series. He rushed into the IPL without having fully recovered from a ligament tear on his left wrist and had a torrid time, sulking his way through taunts of deliberate underperformance. The World T20 was no different, and a show-cause notice from the BCCI after a pub brawl meant he was dropped on grounds of indiscipline for the Asia Cup, the first time he lost his place in the ODI side.
India's mental conditioning coachPaddy Upton feels repeated injury can sometimes result from mental stress under pressure to perform, and Yuvraj has certainly struggled to make the seamless transition from good to great we all expected him to.
Some phases of his Test career have been nightmarish. In the tri-series here, he was back to fielding at point against New Zealand but pottered his way through a 25-ball five as India collapsed for under a 100 runs. It proved the ghosts of dodgy footwork and fragile temperament still linger.
Yuvraj was supposed to turn it all around in Sri Lanka. The signs were positive. He looked slimmer, there was that century in the tour game, the half-century under pressure in Galle, and then it all fell apart again, this time through no fault of his. Flu laid him low, Suresh Raina came in and dislodged him from a Test spot. There were the cruel waterboy chants. And now it's dengue. Yuvraj has been a prince of misfortune on this tour.
The team management too might have done him a disservice. Talking about a rotation policy, Sri Lankan captainKumar Sangakkara suggested on Sunday that established players who sit out because of injury must always get their place back. "It doesn't matter if your replacement scores a hundred or a double. You get first choice back because you were the best in that position and that's why you earned your rest. I think all these things must be set in place before you execute a policy," said Sangakkara, adding: "Otherwise there can be mistrust and misinterpretation."
There's nothing much a player can do when he's laid low by ill-health or finds his place usurped by a player in form. In the larger picture though, Yuvraj, left battling a negative public image and struggling to find consistency, must not let himself become a victim of circumstance. India need him for the World Cup.
source:toi
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