Dhaka, Apr 7: Have we seen the last of Yuvraj Singh in the 'India Blue' shirt? By the evidence of what we saw on Sunday, there are fears the answer could be a 'yes'.
One of India's greatest limited-overs batsmen, the man responsible for the team winning two World Cups (2007 World T20 and 2011 World Cup) looked a pale shadow of the batsman he once. Yuvraj struggled to 11 in 21 balls, with 10 dots, in a crucial stage during India's innings in the final.
Yuvraj walked in to bat with India in a decent position at 64/2 in 10.3 overs. For company, he had the in-form Virat Kohli, batting like a dream at the other end. One thought he would feed off the confidence of his partner. Instead, Yuvraj's scratchy form affected Kohli's rhythm too. The talismanic No. 3 batsman could face just eight balls in the last four overs before getting run out for an excellent 77 (58 balls) off the last ball.
Yuvraj hogged most of the strike during that crucial period and struggled to put bat on ball as Sachithra Senanayake, Nuwan Kulasekara and Lasith Malinga strangled him.
Attempted steers were missed, biffs over mid-wicket couldn't be connected and the release shots (sweep over square leg and lofted off drive) just evaporated.
As the cameras panned in on the team's dug out, Rohit Sharma was shown shaking his head, Raina, the man who was in next - but couldn't bat at all due to Yuvraj's go-slow tactics - seemed too stunned to react. Kohli, at the other end, kept swearing under his breath and kept thudding his bat on his pads.
Meanwhile, the skipper himself stared into space and wasn't too interested in the joke that Mohammad Shami was narrating. In between, on the field, there was an appeal for caught-behind off Malinga.
MS Dhoni and the Indian team management have gone to great lengths to back the struggling southpaw in this tournament, but barring the 60 against Australia last Sunday, he has failed to justify the faith.
What hurt the 2007 champs was the fact that Yuvraj couldn't even get Kohli back on strike, which affected the momentum badly as they could score just 19 runs off the final four overs when they could have got almost 50 with an in-form batsman accompanying the tournament's top-scorer.
Yuvraj was finally out mis-timing a knee-high full toss from Kulasekara to Thisara Perera at long-off. In form, he would have hit it to Chittagong.
The strapping left-hander had had a poor domestic season for Punjab in the four-day format as well as the one-dayers and was probably picked — after being dropped for the ODI leg of New Zealand series — on reputation and pedigree.
After his performance on Sunday, both have suffered an irreversible dent.
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