Yuvraj Singh Retires From International Cricket

Yuvraj Singh, on Monday, brought down curtains on his illustrious international career. The legendary batsman held a press-conference in a plush hotel at Mumbai where he announced his decision. The decision is more than likely to disappoint the cricket fans but it is not at all surprising.

“This is the right time to go,” said Yuvraj Singh in a clip where he revisited his glorious career.

“After 25 years in and around the 22 yards and almost 17 years of international cricket on and off, I have decided to move on. This game taught me how to fight, how to fall, to dust off, to get up again and move forward,” he added.

The southpaw recently played in the Indian Premier League (IPL) but did not get as many games as he would have wanted.  Yuvraj started the IPL on a promising note. In the first game of the season for Mumbai Indians, he scored a fighting fifty against Delhi Capitals.

In the following game, he hit three consecutive sixes off Yuzvendra Chahal to show that he still has a lot to offer. However, his form soon dipped. In the third and fourth game, he managed just 18 and 4 before Mumbai Indians decided to drop him from the playing eleven. Since then Yuvraj did not play a single game as Mumbai Indians went on to win the tournament.

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Reports then came out that Yuvraj was contemplating retirement in order to ply his trade in T20 leagues across the world. The BCCI does not allow its active players to play in overseas T20 Leagues and thus it is mandatory to retire from international and first-class cricket.

Yuvraj will go down as one of the biggest match-winners for India. He starred in India’s two biggest wins of the century – Word T20 in 2007 and the World Cup in 2011. In the 2007 World T20, he hit Stuart Broad for six sixes in an over during India’s Super 8 match against England. Yuvraj didn’t stop there as he demolished an Australian attack in the semi-final by scoring 70 off just 30 balls. India had gone on to beat Pakistan to lift the trophy.

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Four years later, he played a huge role in ending India’s 28-year-long wait for the biggest prize in world cricket – the Cricket World Cup. He scored 362 runs, including a century against the West Indies in Chennai, and picked up 15 wickets to bag the Man of the Tournament award.

But his joy was short-lived as he was diagnosed with a rare germ-cell cancer soon after the World Cup. But the fighter he is, he beat cancer and made a miraculous return to the cricket field. In 2012, he was back to playing for India. Yuvraj, however, never managed to seal his spot in the team after recovering from cancer.

Yuvraj Singh last played a Test in 2012 and ODI and T20 in 2017. Overall, Yuvraj represented India in 40 Tests, 304 ODIs and 58 T20Is, scoring over 11,000 runs and picking up 227 wickets.

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