Yuvraj Singh did not really get the farewell he deserved. The former India batsman walked away from the game silently last year after failing to make it to India’s squad for the World Cup. Before retiring, he had waited for more than a year to make a comeback to the Indian team. His last appearance for Team India had come during the 2017 West Indies tour.
The legendary batsman has now revealed that it was Virat Kohli who backed him till the very end, but former skipper MS Dhoni showed him the real picture and said that he wasn’t in the scheme of things for 2019 World Cup.
Yuvraj Singh made a fairytale comeback to the Indian team in 2017 during the home ODI series against England. In the same series, he had scored a career-best 150. Later that year, he was a part of the team that made it to the final of the Champions Trophy. He had started the tournament with an impressive fifty against Pakistan before losing his form. And when he failed to deliver in West Indies, he was dropped.
“When I made my comeback, Virat Kohli supported me. Had he not backed me then I wouldn’t have made a comeback. But then it was Dhoni who showed me the correct picture about the 2019 World Cup that selectors are not looking at you,” Yuvraj Singh told News18. “He showed me the real picture. He gave me clarity. He did as much as he could.”
Yuvraj Singh also opened up on his snub from the 2015 World Cup squad when MS Dhoni was the captain. While he did not criticise Dhoni for the same, he did make it clear that he was not very impressed with the decision.
“Till the 2011 World Cup, MS had a lot of confidence in me and used to tell me that ‘you are my main player’,” Yuvraj Singh said. “But after coming back from illness the game changed and a lot of changes happened in the team. So as far as the 2015 World Cup is concerned, you can’t really pinpoint at something. So this is a very personal call.
“So I understood that as a captain sometimes you can’t justify everything because at the end of the day you have to see how the country performs,” he added.