Yuvraj Singh will play his 300th ODI for India in Birmingham. (Source: Reuters)
Selection committee chief MSK Prasad clarified that Yuvraj Singh’s exclusion from the ODI squad that faces Sri Lanka is not a death knell for the 36-year-old’s ODI career. Prasad said that Yuvraj has been “rested” and that doors are “never closed for anybody.”
“Everybody has got a right to play cricket,” Prasad is quoted as saying by PTI, “It’s their passion. They are chasing their passion. In terms of selection, we try to select the best possible team. Discussions happen about everybody. It is not just MS Dhoni (or anybody else). When we pick, when we talk about combinations, we talk about everybody.”
Prasad said that Yuvraj has a chance at making it to the squad if he delivers. “Whenever a player keeps ageing, for example, I was just reading Agassi’s book, Open, his life actually started after 30 years. Till then he won two or three titles. His actual life started after that.
“He lived with media pressure, ‘When are you going to retire?’ But he played till 36 and he won so many Grand Slams. So you never know,” the former India stumper said, “We don’t say it is an automatic thing but we are all stakeholders. We all want the Indian team to do well. If he is delivering, why not? If he is not, we will have to look at alternatives,” Prasad added.
Yuvraj made a comeback into the Indian setup in the ODI series against England earlier in the year. He scored a match-winning 150 in the series but has since been unable to reproduce that form.
