Yuvraj powers India to beat Pakistan in second T20

Yuvraj Singh's strong all-round performance helped India beat archrivals Pakistan by 11 runs in the second Twenty20 International, played in Ahmedabad on December 28.

Having lost the first T20 in Bangalore, pressure was on India to come good and avoid an embarrassing series defeat and their top-three batsmen gave them a solid start.

Yuvraj stepped into the fray with India having lost two wickets for 53. The southpaw first shared an important stand with Virat Kohli, but Kohli fell in the eleventh over with the score on 88.

Yuvraj and MS Dhoni in a stand of 97 off 44 balls ensured that the work of the openers wasn't in vain.

Yuvraj , who was struck on the toe off a Mohammad Irfan yorker early in his innings, recovered and took to the bowling. Shahid Afridi and Saeed Ajmal were deposited towards cow corner and two successive short balls were pulled over the square-leg boundary.

Ajmal was targeted in the penultimate over as Yuvraj took him for three consecutive sixes, the last of them smacked over long-on.

Yuvraj's 72 was his fifth half-century and his highest score in T20 internationals. It's also his first against Pakistan. His seven sixes is the joint sixth-highest in a T20I innings and the highest by an Indian.

"I wanted to stay till the end," Yuvraj said. "The previous games I held up a bit and I got an opportunity to bat from the seventh over. So I wanted to get set in and then hit. I thought it was important for me to bat in the end."

"T20 cricket you need a different mindset. You just need to go and play good cricket shots and you need to bowl well in right areas to get good batsmen out. The basics are the same but you get less time to get set."