Yuvraj Singh could announce retirement, calls for interaction with media houses

Yuvraj Singh could announce retirement, calls for interaction with media houses and speculation suggests that he could be hanging up his boots

Yuvraj Singh was a pivotal figure in India’s squad up until a couple of years back but ever since then, the all-rounder has slowly and steadily been shunned out of the side. With his abilities over time waning with both the bat and ball and the subsequent emergence of Kedar Jadhav, Hardik Pandya and Vijay Shankar, Yuvraj has found himself being left in the cold by the BCCI.

The final nail in his career seemed to have been nailed down after the recently concluded Indian Premier League. Bought at the last minute for his base price in the final round of auctions by the Mumbai Indians, Yuvraj failed to get the ideal playing time he would have been eying. Despite scoring a 50 against Delhi Capitals, he failed to get more than a handful of games before subsequently finding himself left out of the playing line-up altogether.

And at 37 with the cricketer surely out of the Indian international setup across all three formats of the game, Yuvraj looks to have finally decided to hang up his boots. He last represented India in an ODI and T20 back in 2017 and the cricketer who was said to be contemplating the move for quite some time now has called for an interaction with media houses on Monday at a south Mumbai hotel.

It looks likely that Yuvraj is set to break the news about his retirement from cricket and pursue a future as a freelance cricketer in overseas leagues sanctioned by the ICC. As per an official who is said to be privy to Yuvraj’s decision, the cricket apparently has offers from the Global T20 Canada and Euro T20 Slam in Ireland.

“He would like to speak to the BCCI and get more clarity on plying his trade in tournaments like GT20 (Canada), Euro T20 Slam in Ireland and Holland as he has offers,” a BCCI official in the known how of the cricketer’s latest developments had said while speaking to the Time Of India a month back.

The last time Yuvraj was questioned on his retirement after his outing against the Delhi Capitals in March the batsmen had gone onto say, “In the last two years, I have been up and down. I started playing cricket because I enjoyed the game and then I was not playing for Indian. It was U-14, U-16, so till the time I enjoy, I will play,” he said.

“When the time comes, I will be the first one to hang up my boots. I spoke to Sachin as well and he has gone through such a time at 38-39. Talking to him makes things easier for me.”

Over the course of the time he spent with the Indian cricket team, Yuvraj enjoyed a fruitful and enthralling time in the 304 ODIs, 58 T20s and 40 tests he was called up to represent the country in. He first came onto the forefront after his enterprising endeavours in the 2000 U19 World Cup which India eventually went onto win. He was selected for the Indian team for the ICC Knockout trophy in Kenya in 2000 proceeding those exploits, a tournament where he scored 84 against Australia in only his second match.

Ever since, he went onto score 8,701 runs in ODIs and 1,117 in T20s along with picking up 111 and 28 wickets respectively. It’s a retirement which was in the works for quite some time and we look to finally be hearing the official news from the player himself today.