I don’t think I’ll ever be done with cricket: Yuvraj Singh

India’s World Cup hero, Yuvraj Singh, has been vital in India lifting the World T20 Cup 2007 in South Africa and he was also named as the Player of the tournament in the World Cup 2011 held in the subcontinent, which India won beating Sri Lanka in the final. However, the highlight of his career was the six sixes, which came off Stuart Broad’s bowling in the World T20 2007.

In an interview with the Facebook page ‘Humans of Bombay’, he spoke more about the game of cricket, the way he survived cancer, his cricket career, and much more.

The 34-year old said that the only medal he won till he was 10 years old was for skating, and cricket was just one among different sports he used to play. And it all started once his father asked him to take one sport seriously, “I won the gold medal in only one sport when I was around 10 years old and that was in skating! My father sat me down that day and said, ‘I understand you can’t study but if you love sports so much at least take one that can get you somewhere…focus on cricket.”

Started at 500 INR for a month:

Similar to every story behind a successful person, he also had to take the hard way through to reach here and achieve whatever he had achieved thus far in his cricketing career. He doesn’t get selected in the Under-14 trials for Haryana, but he kept working hard to achieve his goal, which was always to play for India. India has been that kind of a nation where 4 out of 5 kids, wants to be a cricketer and thus his journey was never an easy one by any means.

“I still remember, my first real ‘job’ was playing for Air India’s corporate team and my stipend for the whole month was 500 Rupees given by Punjab Communications,” Yuvraj said about his first income, who was the biggest buys in the 2014 IPL season, where he was bagged by Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) for 14 crores.

His dream to play for India started turning true, as he led India to win the Under-19 World Cup, in which he was named as the player of the tournament. “I remember at that point, I would watch Tendulkar and Ganguly on my television set and know on every fibre of my being that someday I would be out there playing with them— I felt it, I knew it; I believed it.”

The southpaw cherished the moment when he got the opportunity to play with the legends of Indian cricket as he made his debut in 2000 against Kenya in an ODI match.

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The darker side:

However, it has not been an easy journey for Yuvraj as the darker side of life came when he was diagnosed with stage-1 lung cancer. After bringing an end to the 28-year-old wait for a World Cup in 2011, he went for his treatment and came back to the cricketing arena 3 months later. “One cannot always live up to the expectations when a nation of 1.2 billion people wants you to win every single game,” he said about his darker days.

His willingness to fight was one of the main reasons for his successful comeback. “When life knocks down you have a choice — to get up. So I thought to myself – ‘get up and do it again’,” he said. Later, he started the foundation YouWeCan, which helps to fight against cancer by creating awareness, its prevention & raising funds.

“I went through cancer so that through my foundation YouWeCan I could do more for those who need it. I believe that I had to go through it to have a larger purpose. God has been kind enough to give me everything and the only way forward is to give back,” he said.

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“I sponsor the entire education of 25 kids whose parents don’t have the funds. When I met them and they told me about their ambitions, I knew that this is what I want to continue doing— give back and help them make a ‘come back’, just like I did,” he concluded.