Eye on India: Dejected Yuvraj goes back to basics

Dubai: The picture of a forlorn Yuvraj Singh on an Indian website, working on arm-strengthening exercises at Bangalore's National Cricket Academy (NCA), almost had a poignant quality about it. It actually reminded you of an insurance company ad which the temperamental star did sometime ago.

Yuvraj's Hindi lines in that ad, when loosely translated into English, ran something like this: "All the glamour exists as long as the bat talks. The day it stops doing so, then…" It's only then apt that after being dumped from the ongoing Asia Cup squad due to poor form and lack of fitness, the dasher says that he only wants his bat to do the talking now. Touche, Yuvi!

The last year had been a nightmarish one for him when, far from celebrating his 10 years in international cricket, the batsman had been making news for all the wrong reasons. The freakish injuries — which also kept recurring, did nothing to alleviate his misery. A major blow came when he lost the captaincy of King's XI Punjab— which had him sulking during the entire IPL as a lack of runs and a horrible campaign by the team only complicated matters.

The swagger was gone, the runs dried up in the T-20 World Cup as well and his refrain of "why-always-me" was also not good enough. Topping his list of woes was a bar brawl in the West Indies — and the selectors quite rightly thought enough was enough. Well, it's still early days to say whether Yuvraj will come back a "reformed" man — but the heartening part of it is to see that he has decided to go back to the basics. The words of skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who went to the extent of saying that no one can actually bat like him, must have also lifted his spirits.

For somebody blessed with such enormous talents, the "bad boy" image has often cost the mercurial batsman a lot of things in his career — including the Indian captaincy. While Zaheer Khan, who made his international debut along with Yuvraj in 2000, has elevated himself to the status of an elder statesman in the Indian team, the latter had continued with the ways of a recalcitrant child.

On the threshold of 30 years, he may still have a good four to five years of international cricket left in him as a batsman. But for that, he needs to get his fitness and focus back together. May be, the selectors' snub could trigger it all!