And when I sit down to think of game changers, my favourite image is of Yuvraj Singh going down on his padded knees, his left hand holding the bat aloft, a clenched right fist rising up and letting a guttural scream at the end of the quarterfinal against Australia. The screaming drive through covers signalled the end of the glittering trophy’s stay in an Australian shelf since 1999.

It is a fact that Yuvraj Singh has not played in any of the 20 one-day internationals that India has competed in after the World Cup final on April 2 and featured in two Tests against the West Indies when it became known that he had a tumor in his lung and needed rest and 55 tablets a day to recover from the ailment.

He is battling on a different pitch right now but with similar discipline and determination that he showed during the World Cup. The left-handed batsman held the middle-order together when necessary and provided the thrust at the finish. He showed he could deliver 10 economical overs, giving skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni the luxury of picking just four specialist bowlers.

Let us revisit the World Cup games and get some numbers out of the way. He not only scored 362 runs, including a hundred against the West Indies and four half-centuries, but also claimed 15 wickets, including a five-for against against Ireland and two wickets each in the last four games against the West Indies, Australia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. He topped the team’s batting averages though Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag scored more runs than him. And among the bowlers, only Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan sent down more overs than Yuvraj Singh did in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011.

His performances against Ireland, Netherlands, the West Indies and Australia helped him pick up four Man of the Match awards. Inevitably, he also edged out Sri Lankan Kumar Sangakkara, TM Dilshan and Muttiah Muralitharan, joint-top wicket-takers Shahid Afridi (Pakistan) and Zaheer Khan (India) as well AB de Villiers (South Africa) as the Man of the Series.

Yuvraj Singh is the kind of talent that made one stick the neck out a long way and pick him as the most valuable player in a squad that boasted of players like Tendulkar and Sehwag, Gambhir and Suresh Raina, Dhoni and Yusuf Pathan. And there was so much personal delight at the manner in which he justified the favouritism!

So what is it about Yuvraj Singh that makes him a game changer in 2011 ahead of men like Dhoni, Sehwag, Tendulkar, Virat Kohli and Test cricket’s most prolific batsman of the year Rahul Dravid? Oodles of talent, the right amount of self-confidence and a maturity that came because of time spent away from the Indian team.

Yet, above all this, Yuvraj Singh nursed a hunger to perform on the biggest stage. For years, he had been criticised for his flamboyance, for his life in the fast lane. And here was his best chance to show to himself, more than to anyone else, that he could aspire to be among the biggest contributors to Team India’s cause.

There was not much insight into his talents in the opening game against Bangladesh in Dhaka but the breezy half century against England in Bangalore was but a glimpse into what he could mean to the team. A five wicket haul and a workmanlike halfcentury against Ireland showed that he could adapt. A similar half-century against the Netherlands in Delhi came when the top order faltered.

Small wonder skipper Dhoni said he was a great fan of Yuvraj Singh for the way he batted according to the situation.  In some ways, he defined Yuvraj Singh as a gamechanger. “I always believed he is a big match player and performs well in the big tournaments and in the highly-rated bilateral series. It is good to see him scoring runs, getting wickets and put that extra effort in the fielding department also,” he said.

It is not as if such praise went to his head but Yuvraj Singh contributed precious little in India’s next game against South Africa in Nagpur. He made up with a century against the West Indies in Chennai and there was no looking back after that. He claimed the wickets of Brad Haddin and Michael Clarke and a half century in the quarterfinal and in the high-voltage semifinal in Mohali, he picked up the wickets of Asad Shafiq and Younis Khan in successive overs to scuttle Pakistan’s dreams of upsetting India’s applecart.

The final saw him dismiss Kumar Sangakkara and Thilan Samaraweera and it was fitting that he was in the thick of things, watching Dhoni from 20 yards or so away when the Indian captain launched a delivery from Nuwan Kulasekhara for six to seal a famous victory. Well before the ball settled in the stands, Yuvraj was sprinting down the track to envelop his captain in a bear hug. And that is the other freeze frame from the World Cup that has not faded away.

Come to think of it, some years ago, he was reduced to a bundle of doubts at the batting crease by Ajantha Mendis. He managed just 72 runs in six innings in Sri Lanka, being dismissed by Mendis as many as four times. But an hour-long conversation with Tendulkar ensured that the self-confidence would not be eroded.

“When the time comes, you’ll matter the most,” Tendulkar told him. And in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011,Yuvraj Singh’s performances as a gamechanger mattered the most. Didn’t they? And along the way, he gave us one moment that will stay etched in the mind for time to come.

(This piece was written for Prabhat Khabar)

More than the 341 runs that he has scored so far in the World Cup, it is the manner in which he has scored them that offers us insight into this calming journey. Of the six innings he has played, he has failed to cross the minor milestone of the half-century just once, falling for 12 in that game against South Africa in Nagpur.

Clearly, he has enjoyed being given responsibility and has responded brilliantly, the 11 wickets that he has claimed being of significant value to the home side. But all this would not have been possible had he not understood that the journey inwards to rediscover that cricket was the best form of expressing his unquenched passion for life.

One of the true tests of a sportsman’s character is how well he recovers from being in the dumps, it can be said without fear of contradiction – or the charge of being biased – that YuvrajSingh has redeemed himself and regained his place in the hearts of many fans who were quickly finding new heroes to idolise.

Of course, while he had to deal with the demons plaguing his career by himself, he needed some friendly support too. Some of it came from skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni who believes Yuvraj Singh is a big match player and performs well in the big tournaments and in the highly-rated bilateral series.

And there has been much support from the man he called grandfather – Sachin Tendulkar. There is no doubt that Tendulkar thinks highly of Yuvraj Singh’s natural talent and makes it a point to share his wisdom.

Perhaps he would not have been driven to do the soul-searching had he not been dropped from the Asia Cup squad in June 2010. Come to think of it, Suresh Raina, Cheteshwar Punjara and perhaps even Virat Kohli nudged ahead of him in the Test match stakes, leaving the 29-year-old to wonder where he went wrong.

Was he paying the price for being dismissed by Muttiah Muralitharan twice in the Galle Test match in July last year? Or was he simply a victim of perception that he was lackadaisical in his approach to playing for India, neglecting his fitness and not being focussed on the preparation needed to compete?

Perhaps it was a bit of all this and more.

Yet, in January this year, when Yuvraj Singh made just one half-century in five one-day internationals in South Africa, some wondered why he was being persisted with and why he was picked to be a part of India’s World Cup campaign. To them, he was a spent force who was searching for the form that made watching him at the crease such an enjoyable pursuit.

Around that time, this writer picked Yuvraj Singh as the stand out performer for India at the World Cup. Read that piece here. It is a risk, in the best of times, picking one player from a squad that boasts of men like Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir and Suresh Raina, Dhoni and Yusuf Pathan, Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh.

So what was it about Yuvraj Singh that made this writer stick his neck out at a time when he was still some way from cementing his place in the team. Simply stated, it was his ability to hold the middle-order together or provide the thrust at the finish. He may have slowed down a bit on the field after he suffered a knee injury some years ago but he can still deliver 10 economical overs of his own, thus giving Dhoni the luxury of going into a game with just four specialist bowlers.

“Of course, I am a great fan of Yuvraj Singh as he bats at No. 4. He can change the way he needs to bat according to the demand. And his bowling comes as a big asset, especially since we play with four bowlers and he does the job of the fifth bowler,” Dhoni said about the lynchpin when talking to the media before the team’s league game against the Netherlands in Delhi.

Indeed, his return to the collective consciousness of the nation’s cricket fans has not been easy but it has been worthwhile for Yuvraj Singh himself. Indeed, it is good to see him score runs, get wickets and put that extra effort in the fielding department also. But above all, it is great to see him enjoy his cricket all over again.

The  Hindi version of this  piece  first appeared in a leading  newspaper, Prabhat Khabar

For instance, Mahendra Dhoni’s captaincy – be it his decision (in conjuction with fellow selectors) to retain Suresh Raina in the XI ahead of Yusuf Pathan, consequent to Virender Sehwag’s return or the bowling changes that he rung in – was top notch. The team’s fielding – so often criticised – was rung above the usual.

Zaheer Khan’s response to his captain’s call for wickets or R Ashwin’s nerveless bowling in Powerplay, Sachin Tendulkar’s intensity at the start of the run-chase, Gautam Gambhir’s sheer will power to contribute to the team’s cause despite obvious sluggishness and Raina’s maturity during his match-winning stand with Yuvraj Singh are all more cases in point.

Yet, no team can be satisfied with the old philosophy that said ‘You are as good as your last performance.’ That has to be tweaked to the present times when a team is only as good as its preparation and its current performance.

Yes, it is time to move on – not just for the Indian team as it travels to Mohali but also for fans and critics. The nature of competition in the knockout stage is such that it severely punishes teams every time for playing below par. And the converse is not always true: sides are not often rewarded for raising the bar.

The biggest challenge for the Indian team, therefore, as it prepares to take on Pakistan in its next high-voltage game is to take its collective mind off that amazing effort against Australia and move on. If the squad lingers for long in the afterglow of a fine victory in Motera, its preparations for Mohali can be affected.

I remember how, in 1996, three days after an emotionally-charged game against Pakistan in Bangalore, India capitulated in the semifinal to Sri Lanka at the Eden Gardens in Calcutta. A lot of reasons have been attributed to that loss but I have always suspected that the team was not able to recoup its emotional energy quickly enough.

Yet, I also recall how in the span of three days India beat Australia 2-0 in the best-of-three finals of the Commonwealth Bank Series in 2008. It tells me that the modern Indian teams have evolved and can handle the task of recharging the emotional batteries quite well.

If it was Ireland in Bangalore on Sunday, it was the Netherlands that caused creased foreheads in the Indian camp at the Ferozshah Kotla here today. It was up to Yuvraj Singh (51 not out, balls, fours) and Mahendra Singh Dhoni to share an unbeaten 52-run stand and steer India home with 13.3 overs to spare.

After a frenetic start in which Virender Sehwag (39, 26 balls, five fours, two sixes) and Sachin Tendulkar (27, 22 balls, six fours) scored at 9.2 runs an over, India lost its way. The openers gifted their wickets to left-arm spinner Pieter Seelaar while Yusuf Pathan, promoted to No. 3 to give him some time in the middle, offered a return catch after a brief flourish.

With the medium-paced Peter Borren hitting an excellent length unlike his new ball bowlers, Gautam Gambhir (28), who survived a run out chance when he had made just three runs, and Virat Kohli (12) did not last long.

For all that, it will be the Indian bowling that merits more discussion. The attack, especially Harbajan Singh and Piyush Chawla, brought themselves under the scanner as the Netherlands set the home team a190-run target. Neither Harbhajan nor leg-spinner Chawla could claim to be proud of his overall effort, beaten by the sluggish track and determined batsmen.

To be sure, Harbhajan’s bowling will come in for more scrutiny, given his failure to claim wickets in successive matches against Ireland and the Netherlands. He seems to have found a comfort level with restrictive bowling but the team will need its most experienced bowler to find his aggression sooner than later.

To be fair to Chawla, there was one great moment when he got a googly to snake past Scwarczyski’s jabbing blade and hit the wicket. He also picked up a second wicket in his final spell but had to sheepishly hide his face behind an arm when Alexei Kervezee managed to pull a rank long hop powerfully but straight to Harbhajan Singh near the mid-wicket boundary.

Zaheer Khan finished with the best figures for India with three for 20 while Nehra appeared to find his rhythm in bowling a full length. The fifth bowler’s combination of Yuvraj Singh and Yusuf Pathan played their part adequately enough, leaving the Indian thinktank to scratch its collective head in search of an answer to the specialist spin bowling conundrum facing it.

Though Mahendra Singh Dhoni said at the toss that Chawla was preferred to Ashwin because he needed more practice, it is a good wager that the leg-spinner played this game only because Munaf Patel reported unwell and because there was an overwhelming desire within the team an the team management to avoid a sameness to the attack.

As he walked into the dressing room for the supper break, Chawla said the two sixes hit by Peter Borren off his last two deliveries spoilt his figures. It was an indication of the defensive thinking that India’s key spinners have embraced. In fact, Yuvraj Singh appeared to have more confidence in his left-arm spin, varying his pace and trajectory unlike the specialists.

Ostensibly, the two teams had different agendas: India wanted an easy win while the Netherlands simply wanted to put India on the backfoot. In the end, the Dutch managed their objective as India huffed and puffed to take little more than the two points from the win. As it heads towards its final league games against South Africa and the West Indies, India left itself with work to do.

And while there is still some time for the first ball to be bowled in the World Cup, Chawla’s showing in the final game he got to play in South Africa last week was anything but magical and did not do his cause any good. If anything it only added to the growing discussion about the Uttar Pradesh leg-spinner’s inclusion in the squad for the tournament that will hook all of India to ‘cricketitis’.

Coming on the heels of some frenetic bidding for him in the IPL auction when he was retained by Kings XI Punjab for $900,000 – the same as a certain Adam Gilchrist and a good $100,000 more than Praveen Kumar and Abhishek Nayar – Chawla’s selection to the World Cup squad has sparked a variety of emotions ranging from applause for the selectors to consternation. All of these will combine to place some extra pressure on his young shoulders when he gets to the bowling crease in any of the World Cup games.

He may find it heartening that former India captains like Ajit Wadekar and Dilip Vengsarkar have welcomed his selection as one that will give the captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni an additional bowling option. Yet, there are others who are hedging and some like Bishan Singh Bedi who wonder what really the selectors were thinking and call Chawla’s selection in the World Cup squad baffling.

“I am amazed that they preferred the leg-spinner who now bowls with a chest on action ahead of Pragyan Ojha, whose left-arm spin would have been really handy,” Bedi says. “I remember watching Piyush along with Erapalli (Prasanna) at the National Cricket Academy a few years ago and thinking that his was a lad with immense potential. But somewhere he seems to have lost the edge that a match winning leg-spinner should have.

The left-arm spinning great is from that school of thought which believes that it would have helped to pick an extra batsman like Rohit Sharma or even a Manish Pandey in the squad. “That would give the team management some insurance against batting failures or loss of form of some in the middle-order,” he says. “And with Yuvraj Singh bowling really well and looking good to bowl eight to 10 overs himself and with others like Yusuf Pathan, Suresh Raina, Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag, I wonder if India will ever play two specialist spinners in a match. The team may end up having both R Ashwin and Piyush Chawla in the reserves, even if Ashwin deserves to be looked at a first choice for the off-spinner’s place.

“If indeed, Dhoni and the others in the team management believed that Chawla can make a significant contribution, they should have played him in each of the matches in South Africa so that he could have got some match practice rather than in just the final game,” Bedi says, pointing out that the leg-spinner did not come close to making his presence felt in that game in Centurion where he was picked ahead of left-arm seamer Ashish Nehra.

Of course, Chairman of Selectors K Srikkanth suggested that his panel factored in expectations that the pitches could be dry and spinner-friendly, the opposition and Chawla being the most experienced spinner of the contenders. And, expectedly, India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni was quick to rush to Chawla’s defence. “It is good to have Piyush in the side as he provides that variety to the attack. He is one guy who can bat a bit. He has scored decent runs in Ranji and also while playing in county circuit. If we plan to play with five bowlers, then he can be a handy number seven or eight batsman,” Dhoni said.

Chawla has come across as mentally strong as he continued to work on his craft while the selectors kept playing musical chairs with the likes of left-arm spinner Pragyan Ojha, leg-spinner Amit Mishra and Ashwin in the past couple of years.  To be fair, Chawla averaged 36.20 runs when scoring 1086 runs in 23 first class games in India and England in the past two seasons. In this time he has also claimed 97 first class wickets.

But the most question is what has Chawla done in the shorter versions of the game to emerge as one of India’s most valuable fringe players? In the two and a half years between his last two one-day international matches, the young man from Aligarh has taken two wickets in three T20 games for India, including two in the ICC World Twenty20 in the West Indies last year. Overall, he has 37 wickets in T20 games and 17 wickets in the 50-over format. Nothing much to write home about, his critics will point out.

More than anything else, critics of Chawla’s selection point out that Dhoni’s statement in Cape Town is a clear indication that the leg-spinner would come into the fray only if India thinks of playing five specialist bowlers. And it will take some effort to recall when last the team played with a full complement of bowlers – a top of the mind recall suggests that it was against Australia in the ICC Champions Trophy in South Africa in 2009.

So what other reason can explain Chawla’s presence in the squad? His being in the squad enhances Dhoni’s luck, suggests one former India player. “You see the captain believes Chawla helped by being part of the squad that won the ICC World Twenty20 in South Africa in 2007 and played the two victorious finals against Australia in the Commonwealth Bank Series in Sydney and Brisbane in March 2008,” he says.

Chawla’s selection may have baffled not a few but his real challenge will come when he is picked to play a World Cup game and is given the task of baffling batsmen with his brand of leg-spin. Indeed, the ball is really in the 23-year-old’s court. After all, in his Aligarh home, he is called Paras. Perhaps he can bring some magic to the table and ensure that the team makes the dreams of a billion plus come true on April 2.

This piece was first published in India Today (issue dated February 7,  2011)

Zaheer Khan has been the pick of the Indian fastmedium bowlers but the bowling unit has been struggling more than a fair bit to contain the flow of runs, even if you concede the fact that the grounds have been smaller than in most places around the world and the tracks flatter than perhaps even in India.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s wicket-keeping could be the other area of concern. He can do with some improvement – he dropped Jesse Ryder off Munaf Patel in the third match and missed stumping Brendon McCullum off Yuvraj Singh in the fourth game. At other times, these wicket-keeping mistakes could have caused the team much anxiety but happily for the skipper and his unit, India was able to overcome these lapses.

For unabashed Tendulkar fans, it was a day to celebrate the little big man’s maiden one-day international hundred in the land where he opened the innings for the first time in 1994, thanks to a crick in Navjot Singh Sidhu’s neck. The controlled manner in which he crafted his innings was a delightful lesson.

Some years ago, when Tendulkar played one of his trademark innings, you would find it hard to remember much else but Sunday was different. The little big champion paced his innings so well that it was another special knock. Yet, Yuvraj Singh’s clean strikes and Suresh Raina’s clinical demolition claim their own place in our mind space

Raina walked in when Tendulkar retired with five overs left with the score at 338. Raina lost no time in joining the run feast and made 38 runs off 18 deliveries as India added 64 runs in the span of the five overs. This was a perfect example of a batsman understanding his responsibilities and ensuring that the team derived the maximum benefit.

The manner in which he hit Tim Southee for four sixes in two successive overs also spoke about his confidence in his abilities to deliver the big blows almost at will. It is such skill that stops him from being dwarfed in the presence of Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj and Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

Not too long ago, he was readily cast aside as coach Greg Chappell’s chosen one. But he was back when Dhoni assumed captaincy and he has not let the skipper down. He did not get to play any game in the Commonwealth Bank series in Australia as Rohit Sharma and Robin Uthappa got to play all 10 games that India featured in.

Since the time he has come back to the XI, Raina has played 27 games and he has produced a score of 50-plus once in three games. He has shown that he can adapt, batting fairly well at No. 3, better at No. 4 and as a wonderful finisher lower down the order, taking our minds back to talk of him as the Michael Bevan of the Indian team.

It is not important for us to see Raina as anyone else but as Raina himself, a special talent who has raised the bar and has succeeded thus far. He has known the pain of being out of the side and has worked hard to show that he deserves to be in the one-day squad on the strength of his merit and his consistency alone.

The 22-year-old’s next challenge will be to eliminate the string of early exits that have also punctuated his career in the past eight or nine months. Of course, no batsman can ensure that he succeeds every time but Raina can work to reduce the frequency with which he has got out early.