Yograj Singh feels it was because of Greg Chappell that Yuvraj Singh couldn’t break all ODI, T20I records

Yuvraj Singh, the talented Indian cricketer who called it a day on Monday, has had a strange equation with his father Yograj Singh. Even though he never refused to acknowledge that it was his father who had played a major role in making him a successful cricketer, he also had his share of complaints against him. The two had a frosty relationship over the years and it was only recently that the two had a talk to bury their differences.

Yograj, also a former India cricketer who had played in one Test and six ODIs in the early 1980s but couldn’t do much big, came into the picture once his son drew curtains over an illustrious career. He even said that had Yuvraj Singh not suffered a knee injury while playing kho-kho in the times of Greg Chappell as the coach, he would have gone on to break all records – be it in ODIs and T20Is.

Yuvraj played in 304 ODIs between 2000 and 2017 scoring 8,701 runs and taking 111 wickets. Besides, in 58 T20Is, he scored 1,177 runs and took 28 wickets. Yuvraj also featured in 40 Tests for India but the red-ball format was never his forte although he has a Test hundred on Pakistan soil.

Yuvraj suffered knee injury while playing kho-kho

“Had it not been for the knee injury he suffered while playing kho-kho when Greg Chappell was the coach, Yuvraj could have broken all the ODI and T20 international records,” Yograj was quoted as saying by the Indian Express.

“The Indian team during the Chappel era played indigenous games for warm-up before net sessions. I cannot forgive Chappell for that.”

Yograj, 61, agreed with his son to say that he indeed had a frosty relationship with the latter over the years but said he spent some quality time with Yuvraj in Chandigarh recently to bury the differences. Yuvraj had earlier said that the chat with his father killed all the “demons” inside him during his formative years when he considered his father a “dragon”.

“Last week, we spent two days in Chandigarh together and those were my best two days since Yuvraj started playing. We talked about those things, which we could not talk earlier. He tried to understand me. Today, when he thanked me for making him a man, I felt the proudest,” Yograj said.

He said that it was a painful experience for him to have got dropped from the Indian team and he tried to regain the pride thorough his son who he had introduced with cricket when he was just one-and-half-years old and did not allow him to play any other sport so that he would grow interest only in one game.