Was Yuvraj really a great player? (Part 2)
Too many gaps and flaws to the record of India’s famed ‘match-winner’
The 2011 World Cup tends to paint a defining image of Yuvraj’s career. The strongest possible vindication of his dedication and perseverance after a topsy-turvy ride. Yuvraj excelled under highest possible pressure with the bat and brought his gentle but effective left-arm spin to the fore. To such extent that he outbowled India’s lead spinner Harbhajan Singh.
More than the fact that Yuvraj stood at the other end for the epic Dhoni moment after emerging as the team’s hero in a memorable quarterfinal clash against the Aussies, he can tell his grandkids he was India’s best tweaker at a home World Cup. Fun aside, that was a string of allround performances for the ages.
No one can take the 2011 campaign away from Yuvraj. I won’t either. However, I am vehemently against making the World Cup the be-all and end-all of Yuvraj’s career. One would rather shoot himself on the foot than take Gambhir’s word without a pinch of salt, but when he insists that Yuvraj is “India’s greatest player” just because he won you a World Cup, I have a huge problem with that.
Players don’t become greats at an ICC tournament, they reinforce their greatness at it. And if only the World Cup matters, what would Gambhir and his ideologists say of the legend of Tendulkar, who not only dominated the batting charts in the four years leading into such events but is still India’s highest run-getter at them. Yuvraj has one such World Cup to boast of, Tendulkar had three.
Gambhir would hate to learn this, but before playing the 2011 event, Yuvraj played 14 other World Cup fixtures in 2003 and 2007; 7 of these matches came against the ‘top 8’ sides. Yuvraj averaged 25.40 in those games with just one half-century. Against Namibia, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Netherlands at the 2003 event, he made scores of 1, 37, 7*, 58*, 16. He made 47 off 58 and 83 off 46 against Bangladesh and Bermuda in 2007 edition but only 6 off 12 versus Sri Lanka. If Yuvraj was India’s ‘World Cup man’, I am Shahrukh Khan. Yuvraj should instead be celebrated as India’s ‘Champions Trophy support cast’. He played it five times over 17 years and averaged 40.44 over 11 innings against the top 8 teams. But he never is; he is lauded for what he didn’t do, with the 2011 campaign bolstering the narrative.
The 2007 T20 World Cup does the same to us; emotions and perceptions sell more than substance and reality. Yuvraj clubbed Stuart Broad for six sixes in an over in a must-win clash and played one of the all-time classics in the semifinal against Australia in Durban. But these were his scores against the tournament’s best bowling unit Pakistan and New Zealand in the same event: 1 (4), 5 (7) and 14 (19) in the final. He failed more games than he succeeded in and never batted on a hostile pitch where young Rohit Sharma produced a majestic half-century against South Africa, the second best attack.
That aside, the 2007 edition wouldn’t be part of any larger theme with Yuvraj’s T20 World Cup career either; all top 8 games considered, and West Indies were a good bowling side until 2016 in the Narine-Badree days, Yuvraj averaged 22.95 @ 129.48 over 23 innings. Pre-cancer, Yuvraj’s only other impressive T20 World Cup campaign came in 2009, where he batted at a strike-rate of 154.54 and averaged 38.25 in England. A year later, he made 74 runs over five innings at 18.50 apiece in the West Indies where teams bounced him out.
You’d ideally never have to attach extensive focus on numbers in the world events but when career perceptions are established on their basis, it’s important they’re verified and quashed if they don’t stand the test of reality. Gambhir would uphold Yuvraj as the greatest thing he’s seen, not realising these are times such claims are put to the harshest possible scrutiny. I didn’t want to. He compelled me to it. Yuvraj failed on ‘big occasions’ more than he didn’t.
In Part 2, I was rather keen to explore if Yuvraj progressed on India’s backing to fulfil what Ganguly would’ve seen in him when he supported him through his struggling days. Ganguly didn’t survive a captaincy changeover at the onset of 2006, but Yuvraj now had an even more shrewd, pragmatic and tactically wiser head at the helm of affairs in Dravid. The great man’s captaincy tenure and its image amidst the masses maybe destroyed by the 2007 disaster in the Caribbean, but over those two years, Dravid alongside the oft-criticised but prudent Greg Chappell built a strong canvas with India’s ODI squad and tried to refurbish the playing strategy even if it demanded sacking Ganguly and asking Tendulkar to bat No.4.
From embodying the traditional ‘bat deep, save wickets and then attack’ idea, India transitioned into a side that could sub-divide roles into anchors and aggressors through their middle-order. The aggressor need no longer ply his trade at No.6 alone, he could walk in at No.3 on a given day and damage opposition plans and field settings, which benefitted the anchor at the other end. So often, this player would be identified on the basis of match-ups and it helped that India now got upgrades at the non-Yuvraj end in the form of Dhoni and also Raina, whom Chappell so badly wanted to take to the World Cup before his injury.
The intent to clearly define roles and throwaway the traditional setting helped India overcome a longstanding problem: their record in the run-chases started improving. India no longer fizzled out when the asking rate mounted; they now kept it in check with a greater mix of attacking strokes through the middle-overs. From the start of 2006 until the end of 2007 World Cup, India won 11 of their 20 run-chases; with 7 losses. They went through an impressive unbeaten streak with chases under Dravid, whose Indian team won 27 of their 43 overall run-chases and while removing the chinks Ganguly couldn’t possibly resolve, produced a better (35–32 > 45–60) One-Day record against top 8 teams than his in-transition side did over time.
The Dravid-Chappell duo’s contribution to Indian cricket, however, would outgrow the record they produced or the 2007 campaign; the work they put in ultimately told on the biggest night at the Wankhede four years later, when the two players who stood unbeaten to soak in the glory were both mentored astutely under them first. As was the player who didn’t bat in the final, but won India the quarterfinal and the semifinal. You’ll never see Yuvraj, Raina and Dhoni badmouth Chappell even now. There is a good reason for that.
From the start of 2006 until the end of the 2011 World Cup, Yuvraj played 115 times against top 8 teams and averaged 42.80 while striking at 88.88; there were 8 centuries and 26 fifties. A massive change from Yuvraj’s first five years, result of two other great Indian captains not just backing him through strife but also providing the left-hander greater clarity and luxury to counter match-ups higher in the order.
From Ganguly’s designated assaulter at No.5 and No.6, Yuvraj was moulded into Dravid and Dhoni’s aggressor at No.4 to combine with the anchor, so often the captains themselves. In this era, Yuvraj played just five times against best oppositions at No.6 and batted most frequently at No.4. 67 of his 115 innings came as the critical middle-men of the Indian batting; his next most frequent slot was No.5 with 34 knocks, nearly seven times he batted at No.6.
Dravid and then Dhoni played enablers to Yuvraj expanding his game as he could bring his experiences and failures to the task to relish greater success now whilst facing more balls in the middle and settling in before he exploded. If Ganguly backed Yuvraj through strife, Dravid and Dhoni threw him at the deep end of the waters and see to it that he ultimately learnt a way to swim against the tide. All three were a blessing to him at different stage.
But I wanted to explore this transformation deeply, for this remains an exercise to judge Yuvraj’s greatness and greatness is absolute, it leaves little to doubt. He could’ve enjoyed decisively better numbers than his lesser-experienced version did, but was he truly achieving excellence even in this phase? The best means to get there is to, again, put Yuvraj’s record under greater scrutiny against the sternest possible test for the post-2006 phase. Both in terms of oppositions and match-ups and while there, assess if he was a stand-out No.4 and No.5 of the world. We’ll apply the same metrics to scan Yuvraj’s T20I and IPL career thereafter.
A glance at the global bowling record for the top 8 clashes for the phase would stand testament to the fact that this was a higher scoring era than is believed on the outside. The perception that teams were running through oppositions until the 2012 two-ball introduction is wrong, quite baseless. In reality, off the top 8 matches alone, only two of India’s opposition teams were averaging less than 30 in the post-2006 period until the World Cup ended while all of them gave away runs in upwards of 5 an over.
With T20 influencing powerhitting muscle over time, multiple powerplays available and greater batting depth across the board, the ODI game had only Australia (avg 27.41; ER 5.0) and South Africa (avg 29.09; ER 5.09) able to tilt the contests their way on the back of bowling arsenal and not requiring amends with bat in hand, which India used to do as a successful One-Day outfit despite going at 32.34; 5.33 with the ball for this period. Of the rest, Sri Lanka were the best opposition attack with 30.58; 5.08 and West Indies were the worst at 36.17; 5.29. And while England (32.76; 5.24) continued to falter, Pakistan (32.89; 5.20) and New Zealand (32.16; 5.07) worsened to a significant degree.
Yuvraj benefitted out of this general improvement of batting conditions and dip and skew in the quality of opposition attacks. When he played Australia, South Africa and Sri Lanka, his averaged drowned by nearly 8 runs to 34.14 and strike-rate went down by over five runs to 83.70 over 56 outings. He feasted off the rest of the top 8 world, blasting 2,513 runs at 51.28 with a strike-rate of 92.62 from 59 innings. Only two of his eight hundreds and 11 of his 26 half-centuries came against the upper lot.
West Indies and England remained Yuvraj’s KFC meal with a dessert while New Zealand, in the pre-Boult-Southee times, wouldn’t pose much of a competition to a packed Indian batting unit in the two series in 2009 and 2011 with their medium quicks. They won just 2 of their 13 games against India in this post-2006 period, losing 10 while being smashed for 5.78 an over at 43.36 apiece. But even as the rest dominated, they still found a way past Yuvraj, who could muster just 239 runs from his 11 innings; 26.55 apiece at 77.85 with a single fifty.
The Pakistani dip on quality bowling is an interesting one. It was down to Pakistan’s long, painstaking transition and super flat pitches India played them on across four series at home and away in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 with an Asia Cup in Pakistan held in 2008 and in-between travelling to UAE for some games. Pakistan found a fantastic overall attack for the old-ball, reverse swing era at the 2011 World Cup and towards the onset of the two-ball era with Afridi, Ajmal, Gul forming the crux of their challenge. But for good four years between 2004 and 2008, before the bilateral relations cracked, they went at 37.61 apiece at 5.74 an over versus their arch-rivals. If we filter it to post 2006 period alone, Pakistan averaged 42.93 against India at 5.86 for 2 years and 16 ODIs, of which they won just 6.
Yuvraj struck 344 runs over five matches of the 2006 series played in Pakistan and hammered 272 from five games in the 2007 series played in India. When he played Pakistan twice at the 2008 Asia Cup on Lahore and Karachi’s flatbeds, where no score was safe, Yuvraj made 48 off 47 and 37 off 32 in team totals of 301/4 and 308/7. He would feel he missed out big time. On the same Karachi deck, when Yuvraj came face to face with Ajantha Mendis running riot in the final, he was out without a run on the board.
Unlike the in-transition Pakistan attack at Yuvraj’s supposed peak, Sri Lanka were able to constantly refine their bowling. When Chaminda Vaas and Muttiah Muralitharan were no longer at their absolute best, the Lankan Lions found other match-winners in the form of Lasith Malinga, Nuwan Kulasekara and Mendis, who was literally unplayable at the beginning of a career that couldn’t stand test of video analysts and opposition familiarity.
India played Sri Lanka so much that Malinga and Mendis were left with no mystery about them; India decoded them the earliest because India played them most frequently. Sri Lanka could avert the mauling at the hands of Indian batting on their pitches; but there was no cover for a hiding on flatter Indian tracks. Yuvraj’s four innings at home against Sri Lanka in post-2006 period fetched him an average of 80.0; when he played them for the other 25 times, including neutral games in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Australia and West Indies, his average dipped to 38.95. In Sri Lanka, it was 37.84 from 14 innings.
Five of those innings came in the Mendis 2008 series, where of all the Indian batters, only Dhoni and Raina had an idea what the mystery spinner is doing. Dhoni brought his strong backfoot game to the fore to produce a couple of real gems on dry turning pitches and played a handsome role in India’s impressive 3–2 series victory. On the same pitches, Yuvraj made scores of 23, 20, 12, 0 and 17. Once Mendis and his ‘carrom ball’ stood decoded, the same player’s record against Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka on pitches that were flatter than 2008 one swelled up to 52.50; 93.54 from 9 innings.
That Yuvraj’s output was directly proportional to the standard of Sri Lanka’s bowling at a given time brings us back to quality as a major differentiator throughout his career. Against an Australia that was supposedly undergoing transition of its own but still packed a punch in the post-2007 world, Yuvraj batted @ 29.54 an innings over 12 matches at a strike-rate of 74.03 until the 2011 World Cup. Take away his Ahmedabad classic, the average from 2008 would further dip to 24.36 against the likes of Brett Lee, Brad Hogg, Nathan Bracken and Mitchell Johnson. Yuvraj had an overall average of only 28.72 from 19 innings in his prime against Australia.
Even Yuvraj’s South Africa record for the period had a Ireland 2007 and South Africa 2011 skew. As below par you’d think his overall record of 32.28;75.58 is over nine innings, it would take a further beating outside the Belfast matches played in cold-weather conditions but against a lesser attack. In 2007, when South Africa had Dale Steyn playing just one of those three matches and featured Makhaya Ntini, Jacques Kallis but also Andre Nel, Andrew Hall, Charl Langeveldt, Thandi Tshabalala, Yuvraj smashed 123 runs from his three innings. But once the Proteas found their pace upgrades with a fully-fit Steyn, Morkel, Philander and Tsotsobe on spicy pitches, and had a steady spinner in Johan Botha, at the back end of their home summer, Yuvraj’s scores fell to 2, 53, 16, 12 and 8.
Yuvraj never dominated quality bowling; even at his peak, he remained a player whose output dipped significantly when the challenge wasn’t shrill. Great players hold an intimidating presence against most bowlers and attacks in their careers, they don’t come up with a ‘conditions apply’ tag; there is no theme with them, or pattern, where they melt or shine depending on how fragile the contest is. They’re visible amidst the crowd; they stand-out.
Yuvraj’s theme remained conquering spin to ease his life when he confronted pace. Until 2011 World Cup, his post-2006 version averaged 55.2 with a strike-rate above 85 against right-arm off-spinners and left-arm wristspinners and hammered left-arm spinners and right-arm legspinners for 63.2 apiece at a strike-rate touching 100. But the left-hander couldn’t have suffered a more decisive fall on those standards when facing pace. Yuvraj had an overall average of just 37.6 with a strike-rate of 88.3 against all seamers at his supposed ‘peak’. Against England, West Indies, New Zealand and Pakistan, Yuvraj’s pace record was 42.2 @ 90.4; it fell drastically to 31.9 @ 83.4 when he took on seamers from Australia, Sri Lanka and South Africa. That’s not ‘form’, that’s a massive skill gap.
Yuvraj had an average of 41.22 with a strike-rate of 90.10 at No.4 in top 8 clashes for those five years, which would endure a shocking fall to 34.60 @ 83.04 if one eliminates matches featuring strugglers England and West Indies. He made only 1 hundred and 10 half-centuries from his 51 innings against the rest. Dhoni averaged 64.28 @ 101.58 with this filter. The mean record for global No.4s with minimum 400 runs in these top 6 games would establish an average of 37.07 as standard for non-Indian players; Yuvraj was operating well below that at his most frequent slot.
At No.5 from top 6 games, Yuvraj would initially give a highly impressive average of 50.05 with a strike-rate of 90.33. But take away Pakistan and that average would fall by six runs for the entire five-year slot; Yuvraj could form a love affair with Pakistani attack when it was struggling. He averaged a whopping 70.25 with a strike-rate of 93.66 against them between 2006 and 2008; 107.25 in Pakistan, and played Pakistan just once for a duck at the 2011 World Cup when the Asian giants had started reinvigorating their bowling resources and overall attack from 2009 onwards. His scores afterwards in that 2012 three-match series, for example: 2 (3), 9 (19) and 23 (23).
High-quality pace bowling and exceptional spinners continued to trouble Yuvraj even in his prime; they left a blot in his record when you’d think he would spend his peak years dominating oppositions without any filter needed to quash doubts. Yuvraj’s image and fanfare may have never allowed us to dig deep into his record, but stats don’t care about emotions; they either uphold you as a bonafide great with the bat or drop you off the pedestal. You can’t have such jarring gaps in your record over 11 years without being documented accordingly at some point.
T20 only widened those gaps; it was expected to uplift limited-overs specialists like Yuvraj and give them spotlight, fame and great success. But it soon broke past those perceptions since the hitting game could only benefit of the pre-defensive bowling age for so long. Bowlers grew smarter and started operating on harder lengths, lines and trajectories with greater variations against rampaging batters on flat pitches. Yuvraj would never again face a set of six balls as tactically terrible as Broad dished out to him; the left-arm spinner he would counter in the modern age wouldn’t loop the ball above his eyeline and give him space to get underneath the full length delivery.
Yuvraj’s T20 numbers took a downward curve with the rise of defensive bowling. The IPL took to the concept quite early while T20I attacks spend time and experience finding their ground. Yuvraj hammered 299 runs at 162.50 in the maiden IPL in 2008, but with an average of 23.00. In the very next edition, it required him an alarming dip (115.64) in the scoring rate to average a better 28.33. Over the course of 11 editions of IPL cricket that Yuvraj played, in only two did he manage to average in upwards of 30 while retaining a strike-rate of 130 or above. Pre-cancer, Yuvraj’s IPL record stood at 26.3 @ 131.9 after 55 matches; he finished with an overall record of 24.77 @ 129.71 over 126 knocks, emerging as a net-loss investment for teams which spent million-dollars on him.
The T20I record tells the tale of its own with our man; from the conclusion of the 2009 T20 World Cup, Yuvraj played another 37 T20Is for India and averaged only 25.40 with a strike-rate of 125.95. Against top 8 oppositions, the average would dip marginally to 25.11. Notably, Yuvraj loved facing the Australians during this phase: avg 45.50; SR 151.66 over eight innings.
But then, whenever the Aussies played their first-choice attack, Yuvraj’s numbers changed. He made 77* off 35 in the Rajkot 2013 game, for example, when Australia played this on the flattest pitch in the country: Watson, McKay, Faulkner, Coulter-Nile and Henriques. When Yuvraj made 60 off 43 at Mirpur in Australia’s last game of a disastrous 2014 T20 World Cup campaign, they played this: Starc, Watson, Bollinger, Muirhead, Maxwell and Hodge.
For a long time, Australia didn’t take T20I seriously. Even the prize of a T20 World Cup was an afterthought for a nation historically known to align all resources, investment and time towards reigning champions. Australia would pick a full-strength Test squad in New Zealand and leave their ‘B’ attack to face India three T20Is before the format’s biannual showpiece.
No one in Australia batted an eyelid if they lost 3–0 against Dhoni’s men; the headlines were reserved for the 2–0 whitewash enjoyed by the Test side across the Tasman sea. It wasn’t until Australia started feeling the gap in their ICC tournament CV did the attitude towards T20Is changed. From a team that had David Warner batting in the middle in 2016 on Indian pitches, Australia would now ask Mitchell Marsh to jolt oppositions at No.3 in UAE and win the whole damn thing eventually. Yuvraj never faced this Australia. He faced the rest of the top 8, who took to T20Is early, and went at 21.56; 121.86 across 22 innings post 2009 event.
An alternate narrative to Yuvraj’s career would have you praising him for creating decent enough numbers despite his flaws; instead Yuvraj gets praised as one of the greatest white-ball cricketers, which he was not. Depending on how one wishes to read this essay, this would seem an intent to nitpick a record to some and a revelation to others. I didn’t want to entertain either of you; just document a critical and honest representation of a career.
We’re so obsessed with personality cults and heroes as a nation I would understand if you’d want to throw bricks at me, accuse me of hate and claim this as an exercise to disrespect an India cricketer, which it isn’t; I love Yuvraj Singh, I am grateful of him for giving me two of the biggest moments of joy as an Indian fan. I can never disrespect an earnest cricketer, who never played a selfish knock in his life and pushed himself through the worst illness for the Indian jersey.
Yuvraj can never be hated; one could try but wouldn’t be able to drop him off the space close to his heart. I haven’t. Which would explain this sense of unease and irritation I am feeling after examining his record to this extent. But I would remind myself, and tell you if you’ve reached this far down this two-part read, to learn the art of detachment; the ability to speak more rationally of our icons, for only then we’ll allow ourselves to subject them to scrutiny, command greater standards and create a better sporting culture as a whole. In the end, I wouldn’t even sum up this myself, neither call for change in opinions nor accuse anyone of delusion, but urge you to ask yourself from your most honest gut, was Yuvraj really a great player?
