Former Indian cricketer Yograj Singh, father of legendary all-rounder Yuvraj Singh, has claimed that most of his son’s teammates, including Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni, were ‘backstabbers’. Speaking to InsideSport, Yograj claimed that legendary batter Sachin Tendulkar was the only friend that Yuvraj had. On being asked if Kohli as captain could’ve helped Yuvraj during the latter stage of his career, Yograj launched an attack on the former India skipper, saying that everyone was scared that his son might take their positions.
“As I told you, there are no friends in the sphere of success, money and glory. There were always backstabbers, people who wanted to put you down. People were scared of Yuvraj Singh because they were afraid where he would usurp their seats because he was such a great player created by the God Almighty. He has been the greatest of players, who they were scared – right from MS Dhoni, everybody – ‘oh he might take my chair,” said Yograj.
This is not the first time that Yograj has labelled serious allegations against Yuvraj’s former teammates. Time and time again, he has re-iterated how his son’s was forced into early retirement.
Yuvraj represented India in 402 international games from 2000-2017, scoring 11,178 runs at an average of 35.05, with 17 centuries and 71 fifties. He was part of the Indian team which won the ICC Champions Trophy 2002 (joint-winners with Sri Lanka), ICC T20 World Cup 2007 and ICC Cricket World Cup 2011.
He was also the first Indian player to hit six successive sixes in an over in international cricket, doing so during the 2007 T20 World Cup against England. His career-high was the ‘Player of the Tournament’ performance during the 2011 World Cup, scoring 362 runs in nine matches with a century and four half-centuries and picking up 15 wickets.