Yuvraj Singh: Keeping the faith

Yuvraj Singh: Keeping the faith

                                                                                                                                                    Cricket +

Colombo: So, India defeated Pakistan, yet again, in a World Cup game. So, Virat Kohli was again at the forefront of an Indian victory. So, Pakistan again made a clutch of needless changes, for some strange reason opting to fix something that wasn't broken. So, what's new?

What's new is that for the first time in three World T20s, India have managed to win a Super Eights game. A seven-match losing streak that began in England in 2009 was finally halted on Sunday (September 30) night, revitalising India's quest for a semifinal berth that may, or may not, eventuate on Tuesday (October 2). But let's not digress.

Without necessarily being new, what was also hard to miss was the faith the team management, and Mahendra Singh Dhoni in particular, showed in Yuvraj Singh. In normal course, that might appear a bizarre, outlandish statement, given Yuvraj's unquestioned skills and the influence he has wielded in India's limited-overs campaigns for over a decade now. It is worth remembering, though, that Yuvraj's life has hardly run its normal course in the last ten months.

Some 17 months back, Yuvraj was riding the crest of a massive wave, the toast of a nation after being named Player of the Tournament during India's emotional run to the World Cup title, in their own backyard. Throughout the competition, he played like a man possessed, fashioning one match-winning innings after another, conjuring one game-changing spell after another. The World Cup was in the pocket, the world at his feet, when fate dealt him a cruel, cruel blow.

Over the last few months, Yuvraj's successful war against germ cell cancer has been well chronicled. The battler that he is, it was never in doubt who was going to win that contest. If there was any doubt, it revolved not around whether he would play competitively again, but how soon he would find the motivation to frenziedly work himself back into shape and make himself available for international selection.

When Yuvraj was picked in the Indian team for the World T20 in Sri Lanka, the general consensus was that it was a populist, sentimental pick. He was seen as overweight - which he was when he returned home during the summer because of the extensive medication he had had to undergo - and under-prepared, but most had perhaps not bargained for the single-mindedness that helped him brush aside bouts of nausea and spells of racking cough to keep fuelling India's World Cup campaign last year.

Yuvraj will perhaps be the first to admit that he is not in peak physical fitness, that he is some way short of the standards of fitness that any international sportsman must possess to be consistently successful in his chosen vocation. But he is, Dhoni insists, more than fit enough to tackle the demands of the 20-over game, and that simply ought to be that.

Dhoni has shown oftentimes in the past that he is no sucker for emotion and sentiment. He has made hard calls, taken tough decisions, bitten the bullet time after time and done so with a clarity of purpose and thought that is both refreshing in, and uncommon for, an Indian captain. Unless he was convinced that Yuvraj could deliver the goods, especially on a stage as big as the World T20, he wouldn't have plumped for his inclusion in the squad. Or the playing XI.

Yuvraj's has not quite been the fairytale comeback. He did show signs of promise in his first game back, the Twenty20 International against New Zealand in Chennai in the second week of September when he made a 26-ball 34. That said, through the World T20 in Colombo, he was relatively anonymous apart from one crucial spell against Afghanistan that settled jumpy nerves in the Indian camp.

Against Pakistan at the R Premadasa Stadium, there were signs that the Yuvraj of old wasn't far from resurfacing. Kohli obviously snatched most of the accolades for another of his masterpieces - he really is stacking them up, isn't he? - but Yuvraj himself made a quiet statement, in the field, with the ball and with the bat.

India were perhaps momentarily caught off guard when Shahid Afridi walked out at No. 3, but it didn't take Dhoni long to recover and get his bowling options and his fields right. L Balaji was brought on in the Power Play to deny Afridi the pace he so thrives on; there was a long-on which was manned by Yuvraj when Dhoni could easily have put Kohli, Suresh Raina or Rohit Sharma, swifter, better fielders on current form, there. It was a statement of faith, a faith that was to pay off as the evening unfolded.

Yuvraj made one athletic stop as Afridi blasted Balaji down the ground, then came to bowl three tidy overs of left-arm spin that fetched him the scalps of Nasir Jamshed and Kamran Akmal for just 16 runs. The coup de grace came 40 minutes later when, from his favoured position at point, he swooped on the ball and scored a direct hit at the bowler's end to run Yasir Arafat out. It was vintage Yuvraj, even if the celebration wasn't; cricket, understandably, is no more a matter of life and death for the young man, which is not to say that his passion has diminished any or his commitment flagged.

He did make a few runs, too - 19 not out, almost unobtrusively as Kohli battered the bowling around. As far as allround shows go, it was more than passable. Not earth-shattering, not game-breaking, but very crucial and much appreciated by his team-mates.

It is premature, of course, to suggest on the back of Sunday's allround display that the Yuvraj of old is back. What it did emphasise, though, is that there is no lack of fire in the belly, and that even at less than 100% fit, the value Yuvraj brings can never be exaggerated.