Yuvraj, always the prince, never the king

Imagine the world’s best striker one on one with against a charging goalkeeper. He can chip it above the goalkeeper, he can dribble past the goalkeeper and tap it in, he can curl the ball in. He can score the goal in ‘n’ number of ways. He can miss it also in ‘n’ number of ways. That is Yuvraj Singh’s cricket career.

Yuvraj could play every shot in the textbook. Straight drive, on-drive, cover drive, square drive, square cut, late cut, leg glance, flick, hook, pull, sweep, reverse sweep… Any shot Sachin Tendulkar or Virat Kohli can play, Yuvraj could do too, at times even better than them.

His contribution to Indian cricket is underestimated. He instilled in the team the belief that they can chase down any total, no matter how big. His partnership with Mohammed Kaif that successfully crossed a 300-plus target in the Natwest trophy in England was a turning point for us in one-dayers.

He would do things when you least expect them. Like hitting six sixes in an over. And he didn’t do it in a Ranji Trophy match, but against Stuart Broad, who was England’s strike bowler, in a T20 world cup match, that too away from home.

Yuvraj played a big role in taking India to the world cup victory in 2011, scoring 4 fifties and a hundred. When his hour of glory came, he dedicated his trophies to his idol ‘paaji’ as he and his teammates fondly called Tendulkar.

He is also a fighter. He would make comebacks when nobody is giving him a chance. Whether it was cricket or cancer. The way he beat back cancer is an inspiration for thousands.

Yuvraj’s is also a story of wasted chances. His Test cricket stats do no justice to his talent. Just three hundreds in 40 Tests at an average of 33.92. Yuvraj Singh was the prince who had it in him to wear the crown, but lost it by a mile too many.

At the press conference he announced his retirement, Yuvraj could be seen painfully listing his accomplishments. He probably knows that in a country where cricket is a religion, the followers have moved on to newer gods and have no memory of him, or for that matter no time.

The tragedy of being Anil Kumble

In all classrooms there is a student, who despite getting 90+ in all subjects, is unable to get into the top 5 because he scores poorly in drawing. In Indian cricket, Anil Kumble is that student.

India had a Trinity, the Big Three, a sort of P5 or G7 – Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid. Later it got expanded to include new geniuses Virender Sehwag and V V S Laxman and became the Big Five. Still no Kumble. Whichever way you look at it, logically or illogically, Kumble should have been there. He took 619 Test wickets, Six Hundred Nineteen of them. He is the only Indian bowler, and the second in the world, to have taken 10 wickets in an innings. A perfect 10, a Nadia Comaneci. 

We talk about Tendulkar asking Sivaramakrishnan to bowl on the rough outside leg stump to prepare for Shane Warne. But we don’t remember Warne bowling over after over, hour after hour, leg cutters on the middle stump, letting Tendulkar comfortably leave the ball, before delivering that one flipper which fooled the Master, catching him leg before wicket.  

That is the life of a bowler.

Both Warne and Kumble were strategisers. Each of their wicket was a plot. But one never became a captain and the other had to wait his turn, till Tendulkar, Ganguly and Dravid finished theirs. That too as a filler before Mahendra Singh Dhoni could step in. As captain he won three and lost five Tests, but gave a memorable win over Australia on the Perth pitch, one that remained untamed for a long time.  

Ask which Indian team deserved to win the World Cup, we would safely say the ones which had Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Sehwag, Laxman and Kumble in it. Barring Sachin and Sehwag, none has a World Cup to show for their 20 years of toil. And all those years, Kumble had been watching from the outfield what happened on the pitch. Were there times when he thought, “No, someone else should have bowled that over, or there should have been a fielder at point, why was he removed…”?  I am sure there were. After all, he was a strategiser.

The Indian coach’s job finally gave Kumble an opportunity to live that dream. He didn’t win a World Cup as a player, maybe he could as a coach. On paper, the timing was right. India had a young team, Kumble was much, much senior. He would have been the guy to look up to. But times have changed, cricket has changed, stars have realigned. Kumble is past, Kohli is future. Money rides on Kohli, and nothing overrides money.