Yuvraj Singh plans to come out of retirement, play domestic T20s for Punjab

New Delhi: A little over a year after announcing his retirement from cricket, Yuvraj Singh is ready to reverse his decision and come out of retirement to play for Punjab in the upcoming domestic T20 season. 

Yuvraj, who announced his decision to retire from all formats of the game in June 2019, has written a letter to BCCI President Sourav Ganguly asking the board's permission to come out of retirement.

World Cup-winning Indian cricketer spent a fair bit of time in the last few months with several young Punjab cricketers like Shubman Gill, Abhishek Sharma, Prabhsimran Singh and Anmolpreet Singh at the PCA Stadium in Mohali at the behest of the Punjab Cricket Association.

"I enjoyed spending time with these youngsters, and talking to them about various aspects of the game, I realised that they were able to pick up various things that I was telling them," Yuvraj told Cricbuzz on Wednesday.

"I had to get into the nets to show them a few other elements, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well I was hitting the ball even though I hadn't held a bat for a really long time, '' he added.

Until the Punjab players' off-season camp, Yuvraj had spent much of his time playing golf and tennis once the lockdown restrictions were lifted. 

"I also trained for those two months, and then I started to bat in the off-season camp. I made runs in some of the practice matches. Mr Puneet Bali, the secretary of the Punjab Cricket Association, approached me after one of the sessions and asked me if I would reconsider coming out of retirement."

Since youngsters in the Punjab side responding positively to Yuvraj's guidance and suggestions and the star cricketer himself was in good shape physically and was batting as well as ever, Mr Bali asked him to consider coming out of retirement."

"Initially, I wasn't sure that I wanted to take up the offer.I was done with domestic cricket, though I did want to continue to play in other domestic franchise-based leagues worldwide if I got permission from the BCCI. But I also couldn't ignore Mr Bali's request.

I gave it a lot of thought, for nearly three or four weeks, and it was almost as if I didn't even have to make a conscious decision in the end,'' the batsman said.

Yuvraj said if he gets permission to play for Punjab, he is looking to turn out in T20s only, and that he will not play in the other shorter-format tournaments he had signed up for since his retirement last year.

''The motivation (to return) is to help Punjab win championships. Bhajji (Harbhajan Singh), myself, we have won tournaments, but we haven't done it together for Punjab, so that was a big factor in my final call,'' he said.(UNI)