CricDigs Blogs

I am writing this within minutes of watching Yuvraj Singh’s heroics against the English in the first one-day match at Rajkot. Believe me when I say this, the guy went totally crazy today. It seemed he was playing in some sort of a local charity match — not in the way he went about his batting but the casual manner in which he pulverized the Englishmen. I mean he was hitting the ball so cleanly that it made the medium pacers from England look like children lining up to bowl to someone in the practice nets. When he came into bat, India had already got a great platform with Gambhir and Sehewag once again coming to the party. Sehewag especially was severe on the English bowlers, pelting them for three sixes. Eventually, it was the fluke spin of Patel that got the wickets of both the Indian openers.

The onus was then on Yuvi — sidelined for sometime from the cricketing headlines, to make a mark. He began in a rather explosive fashion using his bat like a double-edge bat, scoring boundaries at will. It appears that the criticism from some of the former Indian greats regarding Yuvraj’s inability to have cemented himself in the test team has pricked Yuvi’s pride — this is what I call healthy criticism. It would be useless to try and describe the strength and the audacity with which he literally HIT six packing sixers. He looked set for a quick-fire 50 or 60 from the very time he had approached at the crease. The point was to prove that he wasn’t going to lose his cool this time and turn this into a big one.

And he did exactly that. When the Indian innings ended, he was still not out, batting on 138, having stroked 16 boundaries. It never appeared that he was trying to hit the ball out of the park. The just seemed to find its way over or top of the boundary line — on its own!! A few more innings like this one and Pieterson’s team stands virtually no chance of even coming close to winning the series.