A team that’s blessed with the twin-batting-talents of Kohli and Sharma- what could possibly be a great nadir? Yuvraj Singh has the answer!
Virat Kohli’s Team India can be proud, very proud of the way it competed in the 2019 World Cup, now on the verge of completion. India were one of the semi-finalists in the much-appreciated and widely-followed tournament.
Throughout the series, the mother of all sporting battles, India’s batsmen were in prime form and so were the bowlers. While Bumrah was clever and deceiving with his brilliant mix of slower bouncers and yorkers, Rohit and Kohli were firing all cylinders in making all the useful runs for a side that none took lightly, not even New Zealand.
There’s a reason why he’s called the hitman. Rohit Sharma, with 5 ODI hundreds in a single edition of the world cup became the only man to fire as many centuries. While Kohli not scoring a single century was a bit of a letdown, his constant fifties kept India in the hunt always.
Last but not least, the mega all-round performance of ‘Sir’ Ravindra Jadeja in a game that sunk hundreds and thousands of hearts stood out as the only high for India where there was no dearth of tears galore.
But all the positives said, there was one concern that India failed to avoid or ignore: the key problem in the middle order. And now, the recent retiree Yuvraj Singh, a man with nearly 9000 ODI runs has spoken on the key issue that might have let India down.
Yeah, perhaps you know this downer a bit too well- don’t you. Yuvraj Singh has shared that the lack of a specialist batsman in the important middle-order may have hurt India’s chances, a team that did pretty much everything right and spot on before it would find itself being run down by Kane Williamson’s New Zealand.
So what exactly did the famous Prince of Punjab share on India’s middle-order woes? Well, find out for yourself hereunder:
“The team management should have groomed someone. If someone was failing at No. 4, the team management should have told that player that he was going to play the World Cup. Like in the 2003 World Cup, we were playing New Zealand before the tournament, everybody was failing. But the same team played in the World Cup,” Yuvraj Singh was quoted as saying.
“It was disappointing to watch what they did with Rayudu. He was in the contention for the World Cup. He got runs in New Zealand but after three or four bad innings, he got dropped,” Yuvraj added. “And then Rishabh (Pant) came in and he got dropped. If No. 4 is a crucial position in ODI cricket, if you want someone to do well in that position, you will have to back him. You can’t drop someone if he is unable to do well all the time,” he told.
That said, it’s worthwhile to note that once upon a time, not too long from the present day, Yuvraj Singh himself was the key man in for India at number 4. It was this very position from which he ended up scoring 3400 of his 8700 ODI runs, including 6 of his 14 tons and 17 of his 52 fifties.
That said, while it makes little sense to have this matter discussed now that it’s all over for Kohli’s army, one can’t help but ask, could taking Yuvraj to the 2019 World Cup in England have answered the key middle-order dilemma?