Was Yuvraj really a great player?
Too many gaps and flaws to the record of India’s famed ‘match-winner’
Cancer. It’s a fatal disease. You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy. It took the life out of Yuvraj Singh’s game. His comeback from the brink of demise to don the Indian jersey may have been inspirational, a great triumph of human spirit. But the months of successive chemotherapies soaked that inimitable oomph and command off Yuvraj’s batting. The downswing was still as everlasting and mesmerizing, but the power had deserted him completely.
Losing force behind his strokes, Yuvraj endured a dip in his boundary scoring options, which consequently piled on the pressure at the crease and exposed multiple chinks in his armoury. There were four different comebacks; three byproducts of MS Dhoni’s ‘fall back to the known’ policy. Each more out of hope than conviction; based purely on trifling number of domestic performances, which wouldn’t promise substance and longevity at the international stage.
India brought Yuvraj back for the 2012 T20 World Cup with great fanfare and emotions; then recalled him ahead of that famous 2013 ODI series versus Australia; picked the left-hander above encouraging young IPL talents for the 2014 and 2016 T20 World Cups, and shocked everyone by suddenly identifying him as their man to solve the No.4 puzzle leading into the 2017 Champions Trophy. All of these comebacks were shortlived; couldn’t hold on that initial knock; India had to drop Yuvraj not long thereafter. In all, he played 30 ODIs, 35 T20Is and 6 Tests post-cancer and averaged 27.08, 25.41 and 26.10, respectively, at strike-rates of 88.79 and 124.74 in ODIs and T20Is.
Technical issues were always evident to Yuvraj’s game, which is why he could never settle as a Test player, but once power was no longer integral to his game, his fortunes took a drastic turn even in limited-overs cricket. He hit 11 sixes in his last 26 ODI innings and 36 sixes in his 29 T20I knocks before being sacked the one last time. For a man with the tag of ‘sixer king’, that’s low-key.
The inability to shift the pressure back to the opposition attacks and ruffle their lengths up reflected in how those attacks then returned to apply the tightest of leash on Yuvraj at the crease while laying bare his longstanding problems: the short-ball against high-end pace, the sideways movement and quick spin, for example. Mitchell Johnson ravaged Yuvraj’s footwork throughout that 2013 One-Day series, dismissing him thrice in five innings. Six months later, Sachithra Senanayake tied his hands up for that painstaking and match-losing 12 off 21 in the T20 World Cup final.
I hold my deepest of sympathies with Yuvraj for how cancer would’ve impacted him physically and mentally, and thus find it unfair to put his post-cancer record under deeper scrutiny, even as one hold qualms with the cricketer for perhaps not working as extensively hard on his fitness. Why, he became the first big-name Indian casualty of the advent of the yo-yo test in 2017.
Any analysis based purely on Yuvraj’s game and track record would hold greater weight if it concerned the pre-cancer period only, his journey from a teenage sensation to dominating a World Cup campaign with bat and ball over 11 years, and why despite a great reputation and fame as the hailed ‘match-winner’ for big occasions, his overall body of work entail obvious gaps and flaws.
For ease of reading and understanding, we’ll divide our essay into two parts. One, Yuvraj’s infancy after being fasttracked from U-19 cricket as the stand-out young talent to the promising top-level struggler in 2000–05, with the famous Natwest final under his belt and little else, and then his supposed peak years from 2006, where the narrative is that he built on his lessons and experiences after enjoying firm backing from three astute Indian captains to overcome strife and ultimately reign at the 2011 World Cup.
During Yuvraj’s career until 2015, Bangladesh weren’t the team that they are today while West Indies still competed. So all references to the ‘top 8’ countries would involve the traditional forces only. No disrespect to Test member Zimbabwe, and Kenya or the rest of the associates of that era, but the idea is to put Yuvraj’s game to the sternest possible examination.
We’ll also look into individual bowling challenges and match-ups for respective periods with the help of ‘Cricmetric.com’, which has pertaining free access data available for post 2002 period, less than 18 months from Yuvraj’s debut, which still gives us a huge sample size to dig deep into analysis for his record in ODIs and later T20Is and IPL when they came along. A ‘Test match dreamer’, Yuvraj’s red-ball career for India never took off as he only played sporadically in a packed batting line-up with all his technical issues. Hence, it wouldn’t be justified to grab his neck for an insipid Test record. We’ll confine our study of him to the white-ball game.
As cricket lovers, we can’t help but sway away with the wind a player generates about his name at the junior level. Ever since U-19 cricket began to take the limelight, every couple of years we have this bandwagon asking for potential teenage prodigies to be fasttracked to the international stage.
But here’s the thing about U-19 cricket: players succeeding at that level are dominating bowlers who stand at equal or lower stage of development. Rahul Dravid has spoken at length about how the bridge from U-19 to Ranji cricket is often too vast for players to cover up. Until recent years of heavy investment in coaching and playing opportunities in-between the two youth World Cups by BCCI, the system lost heaps of young talents when suddenly from facing three bad balls an over, they appeared out of depth at the crease playing three, if not four, competent bowlers at the higher level.
Unlike the generation of Shubman Gill, and partly Prithvi Shaw and Yashasvi Jaiswal, the stories of an U-19 star finding instant success at the domestic or the international stage were rare in Indian cricket. Think of Rohit Sharma. Virat Kohli was the exception, not the norm. Like Unmukt Chand. Yuvraj’s tale would put him somewhere between a Kohli and Chand: a player who made his presence felt on occasions and was thus backed wholeheartedly by Ganguly, a pragmatic captain, mindful of the perks of leading a team in transition, but far from a cricketer who set the scene on fire with great numbers, contrary to the perceptions. Indian fans who criticise Gill today in the post-twitter world would’ve lost their hair in frustration watching Yuvraj falter consistently in his infancy.
Under Ganguly, the Indian team would assign their top 5 the duty to bat deep into the innings, lay a foundation and ask Yuvraj to blast off from there in an aggressor’s role at No.5 or No.6. He batted just twice at No.7 in those five years. It was Kaif’s spot. But over 97 innings played against the top 8 sides in 50-over cricket, Yuvraj struck his runs at just 80.96 while averaging 29.62. There were only three hundreds — Sydney 2004, Hyderabad 2005 and Colombo 2005 — and 17 fifty-plus scores in nearly 100 knocks.
Off the top 8 teams, that was the era where two of India’s opponents were genuinely struggling with their bowling resources, especially when playing India in India. In matches featuring just the top 8 teams, England (avg 33.18; ER 4.95) and West Indies (avg 35.05; ER 5.00) operated the worst among non-India attacks during Yuvraj’s first five years. He recorded his best avg:SR ratio against these two oppositions: 42.83:100.39 and 32.10:84.69. Against the rest, Yuvraj averaged 28.15 at 78.45 from 79 innings.
Yuvraj averaged 38.40 versus South Africa but with a strike-rate of 79.66. Take away his Hyderabad gem, his average against one of the robust attacks of the times falls to 25.54 with a strike-rate of 78.05. His average of 31.78 against the mighty Australians would endure a dip of more than eight runs outside his maiden century at the SCG. It’s not nitpicking, or being harsh, but celebrated knocks headlined by his famed debut innings in Nairobi wouldn’t belie the fact that Yuvraj’s output fell off a cliff when the challenge was steep.
Against a Sri Lankan attack offering variation, mystery and wicket-taking threat in those days, he averaged 27.61 with a strike-rate of 72.44; the average against a New Zealand attack boasting of swing and nibble off the surface with relentless accuracy stood at a horrible 17.66 from 16 innings at a strike-rate of 56.02, including the 2002 series played on hostile tracks. Even when facing a Pakistani attack that first endured a decline of its esteemed names and then approached a long, mismanaged transition phase, Yuvraj couldn’t average 30.
Now, there could be two arguments to this: Yuvraj was playing a volatile role in a side of multiple anchors and the batting conditions for the era were more challenging than they are today with the old ball and reverse swing, albeit the attacks weren’t as deep across the board. One basic means to reassess this is to compare Yuvraj’s record with other middle-order batters of the era and see if India were finding adequate results for their persistent backing.
Yuvraj batted 38 times at No.5 with an average of 30.88 and strike-rate of 84.12 and on 44 occasions at No.6 while averaging 33.39 at a strike-rate of 79.26 in his first five years versus top 8 teams. In all matches involving top 8 teams for the phase, 15 non-Indian players scored 500 or more runs at No.5 and 10 achieved or surpassed the mark at No.6. The mean record for the respective slots from opposition numbers would give you an average of 30.90 and SR of 77.93 at No.5 and an average of 26.75 and SR of 77.22 at No.6.
Despite unsatisfying numbers, this would initially imply Yuvraj was overall performing better than the average No.5 and No.6. But in the same conditions, against same oppositions, the likes of Andrew Symonds (49.11-89.54), Jonty Rhodes (43.03–85.64), Inzamam-Ul-Haq (49.44–78.29), Andrew Flintoff (45.32–92.18) were producing better individual records at No.5 and Chris Cairns (34.52–93.62), Michael Clarke (52.72–92.94) and even Younis Khan (33.52–86.89) at No.6. Yuvraj’s record was therefore heightened by the rest of the pack diluting the overall list. He wasn’t a stand-out. Just India’s best available option whom Ganguly and the selectors invested in.
That Yuvraj’s CV would have obvious gaps was down to flaws in his range and technique at the crease against different ploys. Brought up on a substantial dose of fast-bowling in Mohali on turf and cemented pitches, with bounce but minimal lateral movement, Yuvraj developed his high backlift, downswing, and languid style at the crease. But he never really leaned on the ball or could avert his bat coming down from an angle, for in One-Day cricket, you had to find runs through to the deep-third region or past the in-field off the lengths that you would leave or defend when playing the first-class game.
But top-level quicks found a way past him. He averaged 30.5 with a strike-rate of 84.9 against all pacers from the start of 2002 until the end of 2005. 19 of these innings came facing attacks with a left-arm pacer part of the challenge. Yuvraj was out a woeful 7 times for 79 runs at a strike-rate of 54.1 against left-arm quicks in these matches while he bettered his overall record via orthodox right-arm pace, taking his average to 33.0 with a SR above 87, which, again, just about par for the times. Nothing special.
Yuvraj instead loved spin. His record was spectacular when the stock ball turned into the left-hander and highly impressive even when it went away from his arc. In the three-year period for which his infancy has the ball-by-ball record available, Yuvraj imposed himself on not just the left-arm orthodox spinners (avg 50.8, SR 87.4) and right-arm legspin (avg 36.0, SR 91.4) but also off-spin (avg 46.6, SR 83.9), which was a booming art at the time. In the pre-T20 era, Yuvraj faced just 27 balls worth of left-arm wristspin for 20 runs and one dismissal.
Yuvraj held a brutal presence against spin as he tried to maximise tweakers to ease his life against pace. In his role in the side, it is the pace he faced more frequently than spin. His record from 2002–05 would account for a total of 3,436 legal ODI deliveries faced at one end. But only 1,281 balls of these were against spin. He faced 2,155 balls worth of fast-bowling and averaged 30.5 from 91 innings with a strike-rate shy of 85. Apply the conditions tag, that’s still not your regular successful aggressor and certainly not a great one, contrary to belief.
From Jan 2002 to Dec 2005, there were five stand-out ODI fast-bowlers in matches involving the top 8 teams, not necessarily the best death bowlers but overall best quicks in terms of wickets taken: Brett Lee (134 wickets; avg 21.59; ER 4.76), Makhaya Ntini (124 wickets; avg 24.37; ER 4.64), Shaun Pollock (99 wickets; avg 30.09; ER 3.95), Glenn McGrath (97 wickets; avg 19.77; ER 3.70) and Shoaib Akhtar (88 wickets; avg 26.78; ER 4.78). Against these quicks, Yuvraj averaged a collective 21.5 with 76 dot balls from 146 deliveries faced over four years. If one opens up the list, he measured up only worse against Chamida Vaas (avg 13.7; SR 69.5) over 59 balls faced.
That Yuvraj wilted against real quality and feasted off the rest wouldn’t be untrue even for his spin match-ups. He struggled against Muralitharan, for example, making just 23 runs unbeaten off 48 balls. Yuvraj could muster just 22 runs off 52 deliveries against Warne at the fag end of the great bowler’s ODI career. He couldn’t really come to grips with the only left-arm wristspinner he faced in those times; there were 20 runs off 27 balls with a wicket off Brad Hogg, who threatened both his edges and against whom Yuvraj spent a whole tour of Australia struggling even later on in his career.
When not on song, Yuvraj found even part-time off-spin of Gayle and Dilshan an issue, getting out twice each for 35 and 48 runs apiece against them. Saqlain Mushtaq (31* off 29) struggled against Yuvraj but by then the great Pakistani spinner was washed. One would think the left-hander would’ve made an easy work of Daniel Vettori and Shahid Afridi, but he averaged 14.0 apiece against them with three and two dismissals each from a sum of 91 deliveries. Yuvraj loved facing Upul Chandana, whom he belted for a SR of nearly 100 for just one dismissal from 92 balls. Chandana was an immediate Murali backup and averaged 39 vs top 8 teams for the period concerned. He wouldn’t be near a Sri Lankan side today.
There’s no iota of selective outrage; Yuvraj wasn’t the young batting talent you thought he was. The fact that the quality of the challenge held his wings back affected his overall consistency and ability to leave an impact on India’s fortunes. The ‘Natwest Final’ hero that you thought was winning matches for the team on his own regularly, averaged 36.84 with a strike-rate of 87.21 in Indian wins against the top 5 opposition attacks (excluding England and West Indies) for the first five years of his career. If that is a stand-out, what would you deem the record of these players from the same matches: Virender Sehwag (avg 47.36; SR 104.48), Sachin Tendulkar (avg 41.78; SR 85.46), MS Dhoni (avg 109.20; SR 115.67).
The ‘Natwest Final’ hero created a mythological creature; in reality, Yuvraj was neither a stand-out match-winner in his infancy nor did he raise his game to the perceived remarkable levels on ‘big occasions’. Natwest included, Yuvraj was part of 15 tournament finals until 2005 against top 8 teams and averaged 18.41 from his 13 innings with no other fifty-plus score outside Lord’s.
Yuvraj failed consistently in run-chases, unable to paper over chinks when the pressure would mount and surfaces worsened, averaging 27.75 @ 75.55 in all 44 chases he batted vs top 8 attacks; take away England and West Indies, his favourite attacks, the record falls to 22.53 @ 71.74 from 36 innings.
He was effectively an undergrown talent, who shined only sporadically for India in his early years. If an India youngster of the modern era gives such obvious gaps in his CV, he’ll be crucified on social media and soon become a thing of the past for the team. Yuvraj wasn’t dropped even when he failed consistently at a critical spot against India’s toughest oppositions over five years. Ishan Kishan doesn’t have the luxury he had.
Aged 23 then, Yuvraj should count himself extremely lucky he wasn’t part of a set-up brimming with playing resources and choices, and had a regular captain willing to ignore his inconsistency and flaws and backed him wholeheartedly, purely on the promise that one day he would become the cricketer everyone envisions about him.
Did he?
Here’s Part 2.
