Yuvraj Singh, a 2-time World Cup winner for India who played a pivotal role in 2011 ODI World Cup with both bat and ball and was declared the man of the tournament, has recalled his international ODI debut and how a day before his debut in 2000, his first Indian captain Sourav Ganguly pranked him.
Yuvraj Singh, while speaking on Viacom’s new channel Sports 18, said that a day before his debut, Ganguly did confirm to him that he was going to play the game against Australia, but he also asked him a question if he would want to open the innings.
Yuvraj said that he told Ganguly in reply to his question that if he wants him to open the innings, he would open the innings. He has no problem, but Yuvraj revealed that after saying that to Ganguly, he couldn’t sleep all night. However, as it turned out the next day, Ganguly opened the batting himself and Yuvraj was slotted to bat at no. 5.
Yuvraj Singh faced the pace trio of McGrath, Lee and Gillespie in his debut ODI
The Australian team, in those days, was the best in the world by miles in all formats and the attack that Yuvraj Singh faced in his debut game itself was composed of Glenn McGrath, Brett Lee and Jason Gillespie, some of the best fast bowlers that the game has ever seen.
According to Yuvraj, as he was going out to bat, his only gameplan was just to see the ball and react to it. He was not thinking anything else. Yuvraj was dropped at the score of 37 and he then went on to play a match winning innings of 84 for India.
Yuvraj said even if he was caught at 37 itself, he would still have been very happy with his contribution because scroring even that many runs against that Australian attack was quite extrardinary for a youngster. In the end, he was very satisfied that he could score 80 odd and India ended up beating the mighty Aussies in that game.
