Yuvraj Singh: The Mini Movie

Yuvraj Singh slipped and narrowly escaped coming under a moving train.

That day, Yograj Singh took a loaded pistol and went out intending to kill Kapil Dev.

Yuvraj Singh was the vice-captain.

Even then, when the time came to choose the captain, MS Dhoni was selected.

Andrew Flintoff told Yuvraj, “I am gonna cut ****"

He got so angry that he smashed six sixes.

Throughout the World Cup, he could have suffered a heart attack at any moment.

In the middle of a match, he vomited blood.

The match had to be stopped twice.

Then in that very match, he scored a century.

When the chest X-ray came, one lung was missing in it.

And after battling cancer, he scored his highest ODI score.

The story begins not with Yuvraj Singh, but with his father, Yograj Singh.

Yograj Singh was born into a Jat Sikh family in Punjab.

Where pride and honour were everything to him.

At the age of 13–14, he bowled an outstanding bouncer in school cricket.

Impressed by this, coach DP Azad started his cricket training.

Yograj quickly made a name for himself in the Punjab domestic circuit.

In 1977, at just 19 years of age, he was selected for the India Under-19 team.

Even before Kapil Dev.

Two years later, in a Board President’s XI versus Pakistan match,

he conceded only 29 runs and took three wickets.

These wickets included Javed Miandad and Wasim Raja.

Because of his aggressive bowling action and passion for the game,

he began to be called “Sher.”

Due to continuous good performances,

he was finally selected for the Indian team in December 1980.

In the next two months, he played a total of six ODI matches

against Australia and New Zealand combined.

He also played one Test match, in which his only Test wicket was John Wright.

But at that time, Yograj had no idea

that this would be his last match in the Indian jersey.

And why wouldn’t it be, since for India, across six ODIs and one Test,

he took a total of five wickets.

His bowling average was also disappointing.

Well, along with performance, Yograj’s luck was also bad.

During this time, his father fell seriously ill.

Yograj’s body was gripped by injuries.

His domestic performances also began to dip.

As a result, he was first dropped from the Punjab state team.

Then he was also dropped from the North Zone team.

At that time, Kapil Dev was the captain of North Zone.

In 1982, he became the Indian captain.

In such a situation, Yograj ignored his own performance and bad luck.

He put the entire blame on captain Kapil Dev and selector Bishan Singh Bedi.

His hatred for Kapil Dev increased to such an extent that one day in 1981,

he reached Kapil Dev’s house with a loaded pistol.

He spared him only because Kapil’s mother was standing there.

Yograj himself had now quit cricket.

But his heart was burning with the fire of revenge.

So he decided that whatever remained incomplete,

his son, Yuvraj Singh,He had no connection with studies at all. would complete it.

Yuvraj Singh was born on 12th December 1981.

From childhood, he liked physical activity, sports, and being outdoors.

He had no interest in studies at all.

Because of this, in sixth class, he scored only 37 percent.

To improve his marks, his mother changed several schools.

But nothing helped.

Finally, Yograj admitted Yuvraj to Yadavindra Public School in Patiala.

This school was known for its athletic culture.

Here, Yuvraj fell in love not with cricket but with tennis.

He practiced for hours every day.

He wanted to become like the legendary Boris Becker.

In fact, copying Becker, in one match,

he got frustrated and smashed his ₹2100 racket.

The moment the racket broke, Yuvraj realised he had made a very big mistake.

That very day, his father stopped his tennis training forever.

After tennis, Yuvraj chose skating.

He started practicing six days a week at the Sector 10 rink in Chandigarh.

As a result, at just 11 years of age, he qualified for the Under-14 Nationals.

In the 50-lap race, he secured first position and won a gold medal.

But then something heartbreaking happened.

When Yuvraj showed the medals to his father in the car,

Yograj threw the medal and the skates out of the vehicle.

He said that from today, you will play cricket, not this girls’ sport.

If you do not play cricket, I will break your legs.

Apart from sports, Yuvraj also worked for some time as a child actor.

He acted in Punjabi films like Mehndi Sajda Di and Putt Sardara.

But during a scene in Sonipat, he tripped.

His foot slipped, and he narrowly escaped coming under a moving train.

After that, his acting career ended the same day.

Everything Yuvraj liked was sidelined one by one.

Because in Yograj’s mind, there was only one goal for Yuvraj - cricket.

Like most Indians, Yuvraj also began cricket with gully cricket.

But serious cricket started in 1992.

When 11-year-old Yuvraj was enrolled by Yograj into Patiala’s Maharani Club.

This club was the centre of cricketing talent in the entire city.

Indian opener Navjot Singh Sidhu regularly played there.

Yograj asked Sidhu to watch Yuvraj’s batting.

Within a short time, Sidhu bluntly told Yograj

that this boy was not made for cricket.

Yograj got so angry that he told Yuvraj to pick up his bag and go home.

He said, now I will see how you do not play cricket.

After returning to Chandigarh, Yograj revealed his terrifying side.

Even in the freezing cold of Chandigarh, Yuvraj had to wake up at 4:00 a.m.

If he did not wake up, freezing cold water was poured over him.

Yograj destroyed his wife's Shabnam’s beautiful garden.

He converted it into a marble-floor practice space.

He even installed floodlights so that practice would not stop even in darkness.

Between school and practice, Yuvraj got only half an hour to meet his friends.

All day long, Yograj spoke to Yuvraj only about cricket and Kapil Dev.

He wanted Yuvraj to become a fast-bowling all-rounder like him, or perhaps like Kapil Dev.

For the young Yuvraj, all this was extremely challenging.

But he knew that there was only one way to survive his father.

To become better at cricket.

Eventually, his pace improved.

His reflexes became sharp.

He began to enjoy cricket.

After about a year of this training,

12-year-old Yuvraj was enrolled in Bishan Singh Bedi’s cricket camp.

Bishan Singh Bedi very soon shifted Yuvraj from fast bowling to batting.

He also started spin bowling.

After that, in one match there, he scored a century as well.

In 1997, at just 15 years of age, Yuvraj made his first-class debut for Punjab.

The match was against Orissa in Mohali.

But this debut turned out to be a massive disaster.

He scored zero with the bat.

He also dropped a catch.

As a result, he did not get any chance in domestic cricket for two years.

In 1999, he made a comeback in a match against Hyderabad.

But again, he scored only 20 runs.

During this time, when he got out for 39 runs in a Ranji practice match,

the scariest incident of his life happened at home.

During breakfast, Yograj threw a glass of milk at Yuvraj.

He said that you have ruined my reputation.

If you were not my son, I would have shot you.

It seemed that Yuvraj’s career was going nowhere.

But then, before his 18th birthday, everything changed.

In a match against Haryana, he scored his first first-class century.

149 runs in 291 balls, with 21 fours and two sixes.

But this was only the beginning.

Then came the final of the Cooch Behar Trophy.

Yuvraj’s team Punjab was playing against Bihar.

In Bihar’s team was a young wicketkeeper named Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

The entire Bihar team scored 357 runs.

Yuvraj alone scored 358 runs.

One run more than the entire Bihar team.

Yuvraj’s name started echoing in the cricketing world.

Because of this performance, he was selected for India’s Under-19 World Cup team.

Finally, young Yuvraj Singh’s career began to take off.

In the Under-19 World Cup held in Sri Lanka, Yuvraj carried his excellent form.

In the semi-final against Australia, he smashed 58 runs in just 25 balls.

He took India to the finals.

In the finals, India bowled Sri Lanka out for just 178 runs.

India won the Under-19 World Cup.

The hero of this victory and Player of the Tournament was Yuvraj Singh.

His stats were 203 runs and 12 wickets.

On one side, the Under-19 team was at its peak.

On the other side, India’s main team was collapsing.

One match-fixing scandal after another was coming out.

Fans who once worshipped cricket

now felt that every dropped catch, every loose ball, and every lost match was fixed.

The BCCI knew that Indian cricket needed a complete reset.

That is why in May 2000, they first opened the National Cricket Academy.

Its purpose was to identify new young talent and train them in world-class facilities.

So that they could replace the current players.

Along with several upcoming players like Zaheer Khan, Gautam Gambhir, Mohammad Kaif, and Harbhajan Singh,

Yuvraj was also selected in the first batch.

After this, the BCCI made Sourav Ganguly India’s new captain.

He began building a new team with fearless youth.

As a result, in September 2000, Yuvraj received a call from the Indian team.

At just 18 years of age, Yuvraj was selected for the Indian team

for the ICC KnockOut Trophy in Nairobi.

For this very moment, he had endured his father’s brutality for years.

His second international match was against Australia.

India had not beaten them in the previous seven ODIs.

Yuvraj came in to bat at number four.

Facing legendary bowlers like McGrath and Brett Lee, he scored 84 runs.

Then he took a diving catch and also executed a direct run-out.

With this, India defeated the world champions.

All over India, Yuvraj’s name began to be celebrated.

With his first major earnings from cricket, he bought a house for his mother, Shabnam.

So that he could take her out of Yograj’s control.

After this, in 2002, came his memorable innings at Lord’s against England.

India was 146 runs for five wickets.

There was no hope of victory.

Then Yuvraj and Mohammad Kaif created one of the greatest partnerships in cricket history.

India won that match.

It's in this match that Dada removed his shirt and celebrated.

By 2003, Yuvraj Singh had become the anchor of India’s middle order.

In the 2003 World Cup, with consistent performances,

he played an important role in taking India to the finals.

In 2004, he scored his first Test century as well.

Over the next two to three years, he continued his consistent performances in every format.

Then came the 2007 T20 World Cup.

A tournament that was going to make him immortal in world cricket history.

But just before the tournament, something happened that shocked Yuvraj.

At that time, he was the vice-captain of the Indian ODI team.

So when the seniors refused to play the T20 World Cup,

everyone thought Yuvraj would be made the T20 captain.

But MS Dhoni was made the captain.

Because some BCCI officials were not happy with Yuvraj.

In a 2022 interview, he revealed that he was supposed to become the captain.

But then the Greg Chappell versus senior players controversy happened.

In that controversy, Yuvraj supported his senior players, not the coach.

Some BCCI officials did not like this.

They said that for captaincy, choose anyone except Yuvraj.

The T20 World Cup began.

India versus Pakistan, the first match, ended in a tie.

According to the rules, a bowl-out was held.

India hit the stumps every time.

Pakistan missed every chance.

As a result, India won.

But after reaching the Super Eights, India lost to New Zealand.

This meant that to stay alive in the tournament,

India had to win both of their remaining matches.

On 19 September 2007, India faced England.

India batted first, and the atmosphere was extremely tense.

Yuvraj entered in the 17th over and smashed 14 runs off six balls.

When he hit two boundaries against Andrew Flintoff, Flintoff got irritated.

And when Yuvraj took a single and reached the non-striker’s end,

Flintoff confronted him and said, “I’m gonna cut your throat off.”

Yuvraj also responded by showing his bat and saying a few things.

After that, Flintoff spat in Yuvraj’s direction.

Finally, the umpires intervened and stopped both players,

but by then Flintoff had already made a massive mistake.

Yuvraj was so angry that all he wanted now was to hit every ball out of the stadium.

In the 19th over, the ball was in the hands of 21-year-old rookie bowler Stuart Broad.

The first ball was bowled towards the cow corner.

Yuvraj swung his bat and hit a six.

Then the second, third, fourth, and fifth balls also landed outside the boundary.

After every six, Yuvraj stared at Flintoff and made him realise his mistake.

Only the last ball of the over was left, and the energy in the ground was electrifying.

Broad tried to escape by bowling the sixth ball wide at mid-on,

but Yuvraj hit that for a six as well.

With this, he created a record by hitting six sixes off six balls,

something that had never happened before and never happened after.

Along with that, by scoring fifty off just twelve balls,

he also smashed the fastest T20 half-century.

India won this match, and this victory completely changed the team’s energy,

taking India all the way to the finals.

India won a nail-biting final against Pakistan,

and that day we became T20 World Champions.

With this, Yuvraj Singh had become India’s biggest match-winner in limited-overs cricket.

It seemed like nothing could go wrong for him.

But then, a massive twist came in the story.

Just before the 2009 ICC Champions Trophy,

he fractured his finger and had to miss the tournament.

As soon as he recovered from that, his opposite hand got fractured.

Then in 2010, he suffered from dengue twice,

and finally a cervical disc bulge caused his neck to lock.

Every time he recovered from one injury, another injury gripped him.

In the IPL, he was the captain of Kings XI Punjab,

and when the team delivered its worst performance that year,

he was stripped of the captaincy.

But the biggest blow was still yet to come.

In the 2010 T20 World Cup, discussions about his poor performances started openly.

The Yuvraj Singh who had been India’s biggest match-winner just two years earlier

was dropped from the ODI team.

People began questioning whether Yuvraj Singh’s career had already ended at the age of 28.

But the special quality of champions is that they do not give up so easily.

In late 2010, Yuvraj began the fight for his comeback.

Through runs, wickets, and exceptional fielding in domestic tournaments

like the Ranji Trophy and Challenger Trophy,

he showed everyone that his story was not over.

Finally, he was selected back into the Indian ODI team.

Standing in front of Yuvraj was the biggest tournament of his life,

the 2011 ODI World Cup.

But during this very World Cup, he was going to fight a battle

that would make all his past struggles seem small,

and that battle was against cancer.

Yuvraj was diagnosed with a rare cancer called mediastinal seminoma.

But before that, I want to talk to you about another kind of cancer

that affects thousands of Indians every day.

Blood cancer.

Every five minutes, an Indian is diagnosed with blood cancer or a blood disorder,

and every year around seventy thousand people lose their lives to it.

In this disease, blood cells start growing abnormally and uncontrollably.

These cancerous cells multiply in the bloodstream.

As a result, the production of healthy cells is reduced.

Because of this, the blood cannot perform its basic functions,

such as fighting infections or delivering oxygen to organs.

When chemotherapy and other standard procedures do not produce the desired results,

the most effective treatment for blood cancer is a stem cell transplant.

Stem cells are basically mother cells that create new blood cells.

In this procedure, healthy blood stem cells are collected from a donor

and transplanted into the patient.

This allows the patient’s entire blood system to become healthy again.

For a transplant, it is essential that the patient’s and donor’s HLA type,

meaning tissue characteristics, match.

If ethnicity and genetic background are similar, the chances of a match are higher.

But the problem is that only 0.09 percent of Indians

are registered in the global stem cell donor database.

That is why finding a matching donor for an Indian blood cancer patient becomes extremely difficult,

and this is the problem DKMS is solving.

They are building a massive database of Indian donors

so that blood cancer patients get a second chance at life.

To register as a potential blood stem cell donor,

you simply need to click the link given in the description or pinned comment.

You have to answer a few basic eligibility questions.

Within a week of filling the form, a swab kit will arrive at your home.

By following the instructions in the kit, swipe the inside of your cheeks.

Then sign the consent form and pack the swab in the envelope.

After that, scan the reverse pickup QR code printed on the envelope.

Request a reverse pickup through WhatsApp and send the kit back.

The entire process from registration to pickup is completely free.

Your swab will determine your HLA type,

and you will be registered as a potential donor.

Even if your stem cells are ever needed,

it is completely your choice whether you want to donate or not.

And the donation process is as simple as blood plasma donation.

Registering is a simple five-minute step for you.

But that very step can give someone else a new life.

So click the link in the description or pinned comment

and register yourself with DKMS as a potential blood stem cell donor.

Now let us return to the story,

where once again the biggest tournament of Yuvraj’s life stood before him.

The 2011 ODI World Cup.

He prepared two bats for the World Cup.

But one of them mysteriously went missing.

The truth was that his bat had secretly been taken to Fatehgarh, to the congregation of Bade Baba Ji.

There, thousands of people blessed his bat.

The second match of the World Cup was against England,

in which Yuvraj scored 58 runs and the match ended in a tie.

Then against Ireland, he scored another fifty

and became the first player in World Cup history to take five wickets in a match.

Then against the Netherlands, he scored another fifty

and completed a hat-trick of half-centuries.

On the outside, this World Cup could not have gone better for him.

But on the inside, he was literally dying.

He was constantly vomiting.

Even running a single left him breathless,

and he had not slept without sleeping pills for months.

No one knew that there was a tumour in his chest

that was growing bigger every day.

This tumour was pressing against his pulmonary artery.

It was slowly crushing his left lung and heart.

This meant that every run, boundary, and wicket during the World Cup could have taken his life,

because a sudden impact could have caused a heart attack.

When he came out to bat against the West Indies during the World Cup,

he was literally vomiting blood during the innings.

The match was stopped twice,

and when umpire Simon Taufel asked him whether he wanted to go back to the pavilion,

Yuvraj replied that if he lost consciousness, take him to the hospital,

but before that, he was not going anywhere.

That day, Yuvraj scored 113 runs,

took two wickets, and took India into the semifinals.

India defeated Australia in the quarterfinals to reach the semifinals

and then beat Pakistan to reach the finals.

Even on the night before the final, he was vomiting blood,

and Yuvraj prayed that God could let him die later,

but first let India win the World Cup.

Then came 2 April 2011.

India versus Sri Lanka, World Cup final, at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium.

When Yuvraj came out to bat, India needed only 50 runs to win,

and he was at the non-striker’s end when Dhoni hit that iconic winning six.

Finally, Team India and Yuvraj had become world champions.

He was awarded the Player of the Tournament title for scoring 362 runs and taking 15 wickets.

To the world, Yuvraj was at the peak of his life.

But nobody knew that this man was standing just one step away from death.

Only eight days after the World Cup, the IPL began,

and Yuvraj noticed something unusual.

Despite training more, he was becoming weaker.

Despite eating well, he was losing weight.

After the IPL ended, his friend Jatin Chaudhary

noticed his nonstop cough and asked Dr. P. D. S. Kohli to conduct a check-up.

When his chest X-ray came, only one lung was visible.

This was because a 15 × 13 × 11 cm tumour was compressing his right lung.

The doctor said that this tumour could be cancerous.

The family standing nearby could not hold back their tears,

and Yuvraj felt the ground slip away beneath his feet.

Doctors advised him to stop playing cricket immediately.

But ignoring this advice, he went to the West Indies to play a Test series.

However, his health deteriorated so badly that he finally paused his cricket career

and publicly announced that he had an abnormal tumour that required treatment.

Yuvraj decided to get his treatment done by Dr. Lawrence Einhorn in the United States,

who had revolutionised chemotherapy and increased survival rates from 5 percent to 95 percent.

The doctor explained that his treatment would take place in three cycles.

Each cycle would last 21 days,

during which powerful medicines would be injected into his body for five consecutive days every week.

Their job was to locate fast-growing cancer cells and destroy them.

Finally, his chemotherapy began,

and the medicines not only attack his tumour

but everything in his body that was growing rapidly,

such as the stomach lining, bone marrow, and his hair.

As soon as the infusion started, Yuvraj felt nauseous.

Even the smell of food triggered violent vomiting.

Sleep had completely vanished, and his hair started falling out.

He felt as if sharp objects were piercing inside his skin.

But despite all this, he gathered courage every day and took himself to the chemo station.

Eventually, Yuvraj began interacting with the other patients there.

When a nurse asked him which sport he played,

he showed her the video of his six sixes

and said that it was like hitting six consecutive home runs in baseball.

Slowly, days passed.

One cycle, then the second, and then the third cycle were completed,

and when the final scans came, it was discovered that the tumour had disappeared.

Due to the treatment, his weight increased to103 kilograms,

and the player who once hit powerful sixes was now struggling to even stand on his feet.

But the important thing was that he was alive.

After months of brutal rehabilitation, he finally returned to cricket.

In fact, in 2013, he became the most expensive player in IPL history

with a price tag of 14 crore rupees.

Then in 2015, he created a new record with 16 crore rupees.

And then in 2017, he scored 150 runs to register his highest ODI score.

Finally, on 10 June 2019, Yuvraj Singh bid farewell to cricket forever.

With 11,778 international runs, 148 wickets, and two World Cup titles.

Today, Yuvraj runs the YouWeCan Foundation,

which has helped thousands of cancer patients.

He has several businesses and also mentors young cricketers.

In his book, Yuvraj wrote that when you are young and want to play for the country,

a small injury or setback can trouble you deeply.

But once you see death up close, you realise the true value of life.

Simple things in life, like breathing and enjoying food.

The small things we take for granted start to feel precious.

You realise that living a normal life itself is a huge blessing.

Yuvraj’s story teaches us to always fight back.

To strive to do something big in life.

But also not to get so lost in all of this that we forget to live life itself.

This was the story of the true warrior of Indian cricket, Yuvraj Singh.

At the end, I would like to remind you once again to click the link in the description or pinned comment

to become a potential blood stem cell donor with DKMS.

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