Yuvraj Singh: Killing him softly with his song?

Yuvraj Singh © CricInfo

Singing praises of someone who does something you can't do is the easiest thing in the world. If he does what he does particularly well, then the song gets more eloquent and more people sing it. Some songs however go out of vogue as quickly as they made their mark.

When I saw a strong, confident young lad smash sixty odd runs against the New Zealand side in the Under-19 World Cup played at Sri Lanka, I smiled quietly to myself. Interviewing the aforementioned cricketer at the end of the days' play reconfirmed my suspicions. "I should have made a century. There was no reason to get out after scoring a half century," he said. This was Yuvraj Singh at his confident best. He followed that half century with a thumping fifty off just twenty balls in the semifinal against Australia. At the end of the final which India won convincingly, Yuvraj Singh was named the player of the tournament.

Today, not one year down the road, he has played for India, and will continue to do so for a fair bit. Walking out to the crease for the first time in the big league, he was up against Glenn McGrath, Brett Lee and company. After he made a sparkling eighty four, the media was all over him. "The revival of Indian cricket," "The next Sachin Tendulkar," "The exuberance of Youth," screamed the headlines. One doesn't want to take anything away from the lad. When an office full of excited people watched Yuvraj Singh lift the spirits of the Indian team and with it the spirits of countless Indians, one was gladdened.

But to compare him with Sachin Tendulkar is dangerous. Yuvraj Singh's greatest strength is not his ability to send a good ball crashing to the fence. It is not his ability to leap across the turf and pluck a ball out of the air. It is his confident swagger that sends out warning signals to even the world's best. But confidence is a strange creature. If you let it grow into overconfidence it will surely consume you. The last thing Yuvraj Singh needs is to be told that this game is an easy one to play. The young man's coach Sukhwinder Bawa had a few interesting things to say in a conversation with this scribe soon after Yuvraj's selection, "When he plays his natural game, Yuvraj scores at a run a ball. But when he sees other people improvising and slogging to score runs, he tries something different and that is when he does not last long." This was certainly the case in the International Cricket Council KnockOut Tournament at Nairobi. After a run a ball 84 against the formidable Aussies, Yuvraj tried to be cute in the next two innings. An early let off against South Africa saw him get to 41. He wasn't quite as fortunate against the Kiwis.

Not one week after he played his first match for India, Yuvraj Singh's picture was splashed on the back pages of newspapers endorsing one of the most popular sportswear brands in the world. He even has his own agent, the young man. He drives a Honda City and is often spotted chatting away on his mobile phone. But you can't hold any of that against him. After all, he earned it. Vasu Paranjpe, the coach of the National Cricket Academy team which won the MRF Buchi Babu Tournament held in Chennai recently made some very pertinent points about the influx of big money into cricket. "Some of the youngsters in our country are already dreaming of seven figure contracts. And yet they haven't even paid as much a hotel bill yet." He went on to add, "If I gave you five hundred rupees for a match and you scored a fifty no one would ask any questions. Now if I gave you a hundred times as much money can you play hundred times as well? Or score hundred times as many runs?" Now that is the voice of a man who has seen a bit of the world.

Yuvraj Singh clearly hasn't. After all, his age certificate says he is still a teenager. One hopes that he plays international cricket for the same reasons he took to the game in the first place. Purely for the love of willow meeting leather.

There'll be a lot of people singing Yuvraj Singh's song. These people were once singing Vinod Kambli's song. Now all they want is to see the back of Vinod Kambli. If Yuvraj Singh wants to be the next Sachin Tendulkar, he better be prepared for the hard road ahead. After all, not three months ago he revealed with a boyish gleam in his eye that he "dreamt about batting alongside Tendulkar." Well, that dream has come true. What will come of it depends on what goes on inside the head that rests firmly on Yuvraj Singh's broad shoulders.