Under fire Yuvraj Singh gets backing from MS Dhoni

Yuvraj Singh stretches during a training session

Indian captain MS Dhoni has backed an under fire Yuvraj Singh to find his form soon. Yuvraj hasn’t found the going easy so far at the Twenty20 World Cup 2014 in Bangladesh. With scores of 33, 1, 1 and 10 in the four matches since his comeback, calls for him to be dropped are getting loud.

Speaking after India’s second consecutive win, first against Pakistan and then against West Indies, Dhoni said: “It takes one or two matches. Probably, he will get back into flow as we know how good a match-winner he is. He can turn a game on his own. Today [Sunday] the plan was to have a higher net run-rate but at the same time give Yuvraj a chance to settle his nerves. If he is in flow, Yuvi is a good asset to have.”

He added: “Yuvraj is one of the best players of T20 but yes you can say that he is not in great touch at the moment. It becomes tough when you are dropped from ODIs and then you make a comeback in the T20 squad. So there’s bit of pressure on him.”

“It’s easy to say that it is a short format but when an individual comes into the squad, there is bound to be pressure on him.”

If Yuvraj continues to under-perform, Ajinkya Rahane and Stuart Binny are the possible options that the Indian captain can rely on to replace him. Stuart Binny coming in will solve another issue for India: Dhoni, who has been criminally underused in international T20s, will be forced to bat higher with Binny at no. 7. If Rahane is preferred, which seems to be the most likely option, Rohit Sharma would have drop down to no. 4 to accommodate Rahane at the top.

When asked about the lacklustre Indian fielding effort in the match against the Windies, Dhoni said: “It is not a problem with Indian team only. There has been some catches that has been dropped by other teams also. I don’t know whether it’s a surrounding, but fielders in deep are finding it difficult to judge the ball.

“I don’t know any other reasons but we need to overcome the problem because if we drop a big hitter, we might end up giving a lot of runs which will be difficult to chase. It’s definitely a problem to some extent but we don’t know whether it’s a technical fault or not.”