The mental battle that Yuvraj couldn’t triumph

Irrespective of his age and circumstances, Yuvraj being Yuvraj, will try to make a comeback again 

On his comeback, Yuvraj had done everything to try to convince selectors and fans that he is still the Yuvraj of old. But something wasn’t right.

Bowler X, bowling from over the wicket, pitches the ball on middle stump. The ball turns away upon pitching and deposits itself into the gloves of the wicketkeeper as Yuvraj Singh plays inside the line of the ball and misses it completely.

Bowler X, bowling from round wicket, angles the ball into Yuvraj as he awkwardly manages to keep it out somehow after judging it late.

Bowling from the same angle, bowler X now bowls the one that turns ever so slightly, leaving the bat. The result is the same again as a tentative Yuvraj just manages to push forward defensively but makes contact with nothing but thin air.


Anyone who has followed the southpaw on his comeback trail would concur that from Sachitra Senanayake to Sunil Narine to Moeen Ali to Danushka Gunathilika, one can replace X with any off spinner from the recent past but the above sequence of events would still hold true for Yuvraj. For a man who had won his battle against Cancer to make a return to the team, it was the glaring struggle against off spin that proved to be his eventual undoing. But that was not how it always used to be.

Yuvraj's career can be neatly divided into two phases - the first lasted from his debut in Nairobi and continued till that fateful night of April 2 2011, when he was part of the special eleven that lifted the World Cup. The second that began after that night. In the first phase, he played ten times more matches than the second and was a regular fixture of the limited overs side for India, helping them win two World titles. The second phase saw him making an emotional comeback to the team after recovering from Cancer where he kept going in and out of the team. His last comeback to ODIs came after a hiatus of four years, consisted of two match winning knocks and met a sorry end when he injured his finger on the tour to West Indies.

What separated these two phases of his career was Yuvraj's handling of off spin.

In the first phase, a young Yuvraj would often begin his innings slightly tentatively against off spin but would toy with it once under control. It was never as huge a thing as Suresh Raina’s ordeals against short pitch bowling or Kevin Pietersen’s troubles against left arm spin. In fact, Yuvraj played most in a decade that was dominated by Muttiah Muralitharan and the two came face to face a whopping 37 times. With an average of more than 40 and just 5 dismissals in those matches against a man with 534 ODI scalps, Yuvraj could proudly boast of having the wood over the world’s best off-spinner whom he banished beyond the boundary countless number of times with his booming cover drives. Post 2011, however, Yuvraj looked a pale shadow of himself against off spin, at least.

It all began with James Tredwell. Yes, the English off spinner with the action of a man who has just learned to throw a ball. Yuvraj, on his comeback to the team from Cancer, had already fallen to Mohd. Hafeez in the game before when he came across Tredwell in the first match of the India England ODI series in early 2013. In a chase of 326 on a placid Rajkot track, Yuvraj was showing signs of a man on a mission, just as he had done almost a decade ago chasing the same target at Lord’s with Kaif. As modern day tactics go, England had both their off spinners operating against the left handed Yuvraj. It didn’t seem to achieve much as Yuvraj continued to plunder runs in ways that had made him the name he had become. But that was before he decided to sweep Tredwell straight to short fine leg. This was to begin a sequence where he would keep falling to the anodyne bowling of Tredwell in every match of the series barring the final ODI. The first signs of the struggle were visible in the batsman’s innings in the 4th ODI at his home turf Mohali where he could muster 3 runs from 16 deliveries before getting his wooden work disturbed by Tredwell again to make it his fifth consecutive dismissal to off spin.

Yuvraj didn't get out to an off spinner in ODIs after his comeback this year but the tentativeness is there for all to see

Yuvraj against off spin was never the same after that. In a T20I just a couple of weeks before the ODI series, the Punjab dasher had pummeled Saeed Ajmal, the then best offie in the business, into submission with a knock of 72 that included 4 sixes off Ajmal. But not anymore. After the England series, Tredwell camped in Yuvi’s mind. Or so it seemed, at least. The oppositions were not to take too long to notice his discomfort against off spin and his introduction to the batting crease even in IPL would be invariably be followed by the introduction of off spinners. It reached a point when even leg spinners would bring out their straighter ones and googlies seeing the batsman. Worse, even the likes of Glen Maxwell and Joe Root began fancying their chances against him.

What followed then was a painful tribulation of a man who averaged 41 against the guile of Muralitharan in his prime. The feet would jam. The hands would go stiff. He would appear hassled. His cricket would look ugly. There would be several play and miss, failed sweep attempts and embarrassing edges which would all culminate into a gradual desperation to get off strike and wait for the pacer. And then, in trying to force the pace against the pacers from the other end, he would often bring his own downfall. In ODIs, he often managed to hide away from it by going off strike but doing the same without hurting the team in the shortest format wasn’t possible. The result? His T20I average against spinners dropped to 9 in T20Is post 2011.

One could almost see Yuvraj losing the mental game against the art of off spin bowling. From Tredwell to Gunathilika, none of the bowlers who put Yuvraj in the dock with their tweakers were world class and yet the southpaw found himself struggling to get the ball off the square against them on many occasions. It was as if the batsman who had hit six sixes once was living on borrowed time against off spin. The most harrowing of it was to come in the World T20 Final against Sri Lanka in Dhaka where Yuvraj played an innings that threatened to take away almost all that he had earned as a cricketer from him. His agonizing 9 off 21 balls included a demonstration of how to not play off spin as he huffed and puffed to four runs off the ten deliveries of Sachithra Senanayake. Yes, of all people, Sachithra Senanayake.

Yuvraj's dismissal to Devendra Bishoo in the last of his 304 ODIs was possibly the last we saw him get out in India colors. And the fact that it came to a straighter one bowled by a leg spinner spoke volumes about the graveness the issue had reached. Although possibly ending his career, Yuvraj fans might thank Bishoo for putting the left hander out of his misery. For the agony of watching Yuvraj struggling against a form of bowling he once lorded over was every time serving a painful reminder of his waning powers, something fans have always a tough time dealing with.

An epitome of mental strength who saw off the greatest of challenges of life to keep making comeback after comebacks to a game he so loved, it is nothing short of heart breaking to see Yuvraj walk into the sunset unable to conquer a mental battle.