Fact check | Why Yuvraj Singh’s statement on MS Dhoni not backing him is utterly wrong

Yuvraj is a superstar of the game and his legend is beyond the numbers he has accumulated in his 16-year-long international career. It was about the women and men he inspired with his dazzling batting display, it was about the dreams he fulfilled - at times almost single-handedly - and it was also about lifting the country’s collective morale with one bloody good catch at backward point. Yuvi meant so much for so many people and the reason behind the same was the runs he had accumulated during his playing days under Rahul Dravid and MS Dhoni. Well, I really can’t ignore the 150 he scored against England - his highest ever ODI score and the last-ever century - under Virat Kohli’s leadership too.

Now that we have established that he had his best time under Dravid and Dhoni, now let’s examine his recent statement about backing. Coming to the World Cup, in the period between 2010 and February 2011, Yuvraj averaged a modest 27.50 at an SR of 69.73 - crossing the 50-run barrier only three times. But Dhoni backed him to perform on the most important stage of all, with Yuvi responding with 362 runs at an average of 90.50 and 15 wickets to go with that. It was a generation-defining performance but his career went on a slide majorly thanks to his battle with cancer.

Post his cancer come back, it was never the same Yuvi, but he continued playing for India for the next six years, with three T20 World Cups - 2012, 2014, and 2016 - along with the 2017 Champions Trophy. If after all that, Yuvi, who averaged 27.08 in ODIs and 25.41 in T20Is between 2012 and 2017, says that he wasn’t given enough backing, it was ungrateful, to say the least. What is even more damning is that the 2014 T20 World Cup final loss was the direct product of Yuvraj failing to counter Lasith Malinga and Nuwan Kulasekara in the fateful final and wasting many balls in the process. And still, Dhoni got him to play the 2016 T20 World Cup, where his tired legs had caused Virat Kohli much frustration.

It was all for good. Yuvraj, who always thought himself as India’s next captain-in-waiting during the Rahul Dravid era, even though Virender Sehwag was the designated vice-captain, had his reasons to feel disappointed for so many things or like many Yuvi fans, he can actually bask in the afterglow of those surreal moments of Indian cricket but statements like the one he delivered a couple of days ago, in reality, don’t do any goods to his own reputation. It was damning in every sense.