The lefthander played a crucial role in India's 2007 T20 World Cup and 2011 ODI World Cup wins.
Former Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) batter Robin Uthappa was heavily critical of the way Indian batting legend Yuvraj Singh was treated by Virat Kohli and the then-team management following his battle with lung cancer in 2011.
Uthappa, who was part of India’s T20 World Cup-winning team in 2007 alongside Yuvraj, spoke about how Kohli had never allowed him to return to the national side on the basis of his fitness.
Soon after the 2011 ODI World Cup triumph where he was awarded Player of the Tournament, Yuvraj was diagnosed with lung cancer for which he underwent treatment in the US. He made a comeback in 2012 but was soon sidelined after a patchy run with the bat in a home season in 2013.
The southpaw didn’t play international cricket between April 2014 and January 2016 a period when the Indian captaincy was shifting from MS Dhoni to Virat Kohli.
Speaking to Lallantop Uthappa revealed,
“Take Yuvi Pa’s (Yuvraj) example. The man beat cancer, he won us two World Cups. When he tried to make an international comeback after beating cancer, the leadership never gave him a chance.”
Kohli who is known to have strict fitness standards for all the national team players, had no wriggle room for Yuvraj who was never the same after recovering from cancer.
“Yuvraj had requested for the fitness threshold to be dropped by two points because where his health was at that time. Yuvi has won tournaments for the country and deserved some cushion, but Virat as a captain didn’t give him that,” Uthappa said.
The former CSK and KKR batter said that despite the refusal, Yuvraj persevered but the team had kicked him out as soon as he earned his spot in the team after clearing the fitness tests.
Yuvraj played his last international game in an ODI against West Indies in June, 2017. He announced his retirement in 2019 as his performances dipped considerably.
“When you are a captain, I know you have to maintain some standards. But there are exceptions for everything. Being match fit is very different from being cricket fit. You can score loads of runs just by being match fit,” Uthappa added.
Currently, Kohli is in a similar position to Yuvraj when he was the captain as his poor performances in the Border Gavaskar Trophy have put a question mark on his place in the team.
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