Can Yuvraj cross over into Test cricket?

I think it was Steve Waugh who called Michael Bevan the ‘Bradman of one-day cricket’. It is both flattering and limiting, suggesting, as it does, that whatever his gifts - and these were considerable, giving him a career average of 53.58 from 232 matches in the shorter game - there would always be an asterisk against Bevan’s name. And the footnote would read: “A great finisher of the one-day game (unbeaten 67 times), he failed to impress in his 18 Tests; he couldn’t manage a single century.”

There is a similar asterisk beginning to take shape over the name of Yuvraj Singh, but he is young enough to erase the mark before it is fully formed. He turns 27 next month, and has played 23 Tests. Yet it is his 218 one-day matches and 6000-plus runs that define him now. Can he throw a bridge across the two cultures?

Test players adapt to the one-day game, but the traffic in the reverse direction is thinner. A Rahul Dravid adapted so well that he has over ten thousand runs in both forms; in recent years Krishnamachari Srikkanth broke into the Test squad on the basis of his one-day prowess, and remained there. Men like Ajay Jadeja, Shahid Afridi, Jonty Rhodes stayed one-dimensional (purely cricket-wise, of course).

When you see Yuvraj bring his bat down in an arc, check himself and merely jab at the ball to send it sailing over long off, and that too against Andrew Flintoff, you may be forgiven for asking the obvious question: why is this man not a regular in all forms of the game? A natural timer, a natural striker, a naturally aggressive player, he is one of the leading one-day players in the world. Of that there is no doubt. So what prevents such a natural talent from carving out a permanent place in the Test side?

Yuvraj looked overweight in Rajkot, but he made batting look ridiculously easy too. Have the planets begun to fall into the right alignment at last? He is in form, there is a vacancy following the retirement of Sourav Ganguly, and the series is at home where his last two scores have been 32 and 169.

Yuvraj served notice before he was 19 with a stunning one-day innings in Nairobi against Australia. That was eight years ago, and when he was dropped from the Irani squad this year it seemed he was in the curious position of being neither senior enough to be protected, nor young enough to be given another chance.

So what went wrong? Those who will reduce everything to technique will point to his weaknesses against the moving as well as the turning ball - it is a double whammy. Others will put it down to his temperament, his lifestyle.

That he is talented, there is no doubt. But sometimes talent rewarded early can be a curse. It leaves the talented without the equipment to handle failure; sometimes future success is taken for granted. Seldom is success an accident and the precocious talent often discovers this too late. There is even a school which holds that talent is over-rated, and success comes to those whose commitment outweighs mere talent. Perhaps technique is over-rated too. A big heart often trumps quick feet or the straight backlift.

In Tests, teams know how to bowl at Yuvraj and play on his self-esteem. He can swing his bat with rare extravagance in one-day cricket; in the longer game, he will need to understand the virtues of patience. And of swallowing the ego. The Rajkot innings can be a stepping stone; it could be a millstone too if Yuvraj feels forced to repeat it every time he goes out to bat.