Yuvraj Singh isn’t a professional coach, but youngsters in the Punjab set-up swear by his “contribution” to their game. One of the beneficiaries of Yuvraj’s mentoring is rising star Shubhman Gill, whose class was never under any doubt, but he got to fine-tune his game when the former India star invited him and three others for a month-long training. All this happened during the COVID-19-induced lockdown. Gill, Abhishek Sharma, Anmolpreet Singh, and Prabhsimran Singh spent five weeks with Yuvraj, and those training sessions changed their approach to the game.
“Shubman had already played for India by then, but he hadn’t, as you guys say, sealed his spot across formats at that time. If you see the Shubman that came out of that camp and the kind of success that he got, it changed everything for him,” Abhishek, who is a future national team contender, said during an interaction with a leading news agency.
“Not just for him, but for me too. My domestic seasons as well as IPL performances changed,” said the left-handed opener, who has hit two hundreds in the ongoing Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.
While Gill has made it to the next level and is among the rising stars in world cricket, Abhishek has been in prime form for Punjab and Sunrisers Hyderabad over the last couple of seasons.
Yuvraj was one of India’s greatest ODI exponents, and often, those who have a streak of genius in them are unable to always pass it on to the next generation. Not because they don’t want to, but because how they felt and what they did on the field was their way of going about their business, which can’t be taught.
But possibly, having a volcano of talent like Gill under his wings was also Yuvraj’s way of getting out of his comfort zone. It was a necessity for both the mentor and his proteges.
Sachin Tendulkar was in a league of his own, but if there were two players who knew how to control ODI games, it was Yuvraj and MS Dhoni.
