This was England’s 500th one-day international. It was Yuvraj Singh’s 219th. Yuvraj is 26.

Once again Yuvraj hit a hundred. This time, he also took four wickets.

We’re not sure it would make a huge amount of difference, but we’re inclined to agree with everyone else in the entire world about England’s team selection.

There seems to be an attitude of ‘this is our best team and that’s the end of it’. We agree with that mentality to an extent, but there should be an acknowledgement that playing one-day cricket in England isn’t the same as playing one-day cricket in India.

Specifically, if pitches are conducive to spin, surely it makes most sense to employ your best spinners. That would be Monty Panesar, but he’s not in the squad, so Graeme Swann’s the next best.

England have a funny attitude to the art of spin bowling. They’d never dream of leaving out their best pace bowlers, no matter what the pitch. If there’s a hierarchy of roles in the England camp then spin bowlers are at the bottom. Just beneath the guy who pre-warms KP’s jockstrap.

Tags: England, India, Yuvraj Singh by King Cricket
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Has any batsman every played a more destructive innings while wearing a girdle?

We’ve always liked Yuvraj Singh, but he’s lost a little bit of lustre lately. This is largely thanks to Sky Sports’ ‘look at all the cricket we’ve got’ advert which starts with a big orchestral crescendo, before breaking into soft indie music for an underwhelming montage of cricket footage.

Think of the start of the Stiltskin song off the old Levi’s ad, only instead of cutting to the loud Stiltskin bit, it’s some chump feigning an American accent over music that Busted would discard as too puny.

Anyway, at one point you see Yuvraj Singh celebrating winning a match. It was possibly the Twenty20 World Cup final, we can’t really remember. That’s not important though. What’s important is that he pulls a stump out of the ground and adopts this utterly contrived, muscle tensing contortion, which he holds for the cameras. At least that’s what it looks like: a big pose that he’d honed in front of the mirror.

If that’s not what’s happening, please let us know, because it’s excruciating to watch and the advert doesn’t seem to be going away in a hurry.

At one point in today’s whopping great 78-ball 138, Yuvraj Singh hit a six. Nothing unusual in that. He hit six in all. But this one was different.

His follow-through barely got to waist height. It was pretty much a lofted forward defensive, yet it sailed away. Batsmen shouldn’t be able to hit sixes without putting some effort in, no matter how well they time the ball. They really shouldn’t.

Tags: England, India, Yuvraj Singh by King Cricket
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We’ve had a computer that hated the internet FOR ALL IT WAS WORTH for the last two days, so we’re a bit behind. We’re going to try and catch up, so brace yourselves for some three sentence updates that completely miss the point of what’s been going on.

Yuvraj Singh actually scored some runs in Australia was one thing that happened. He didn’t score them against Australia, but still - it’s a start. Yuvraj Singh has shamed us with his front-footed incompetence this tour and we’re not going to forgive him for ages.

Having now forgiven Yuvraj Singh, we henceforth urge him to take a leaf out of Kumar Sangakkara’s book. Now there’s a man who can score runs in Australia. There’s a man who does little else.

To return to the subject of the first paragraph, can anyone think of a suitable award for the top-level human who fixed our computer after hearing about 15 words of our description as to what was happening? This was after Major Corporation One had used three employees and five hours to tell us to take it down to Major Corporation Two and after Major Corporation Two had taken an hour or more to tell us it was ‘either a software or a hardware issue’.

We’re thinking of getting him a King of Morocco. They’re still available, right? That or a huge pair of hands clad in diamonds doing the ‘thumbs up’ gesture. Yes. That’s what we’ll get him, unless any of you have got a better suggestion.

Tags: India, Sri Lanka, Yuvraj Singh by King Cricket
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India have named their squad for the four Test tour of Australia. It’s not totally straightforward. We’ll talk about the bowlers separately, but batting-wise the big news is the return of Virender Sehwag.

We’ve read that India can’t pick Sehwag in the squad and not play him, which is technically bollocks, yet not without a grain or two of truth. Sehwag’s a big name.

If Sehwag does play - presumably opening with Wasim Jaffer - then the middle order would contain The Usuals as we’re going to call them on this one, solitary occasion. If Rahul, Sachin, Sourav and VVS all play - no first names needed here - then there’s no room for Yuvraj Singh, who only larruped a lightning-quick 169 in his last Test.

For his part, Virender Sehwag has been woefully out of form in every form of cricket since he was dropped.

This rather reads like we think the reselection of Virender Sehwag is a bad idea. Confusingly, we don’t. Virender Sehwag is brilliant. You don’t average 50 after 52 Tests without having an ounce of skill.

Some people think that Sehwag has been ‘found out’. This is true, but no more so than it was after about his third Test match. There’s not much to find out about Virender Sehwag. He likes to try and hit every ball for four. That’s pretty much his gameplan. That he succeeded for so long with such a pig-headedly flawed approach is proof of his talent.

He did get a bit fat though, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing - as previously explored at great length on this site.

Virender Sehwag proves his class by hitting 300 against South Africa
Virender Sehwag racks up 10th hundred in excess of 150

Tags: India, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh by King Cricket
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So Yuvraj Singh finally gets a Test match. It’s a fairly rare occurrence. Ridiculously rare.

He arrived at the crease with India 61-4 and proceeded to smear 28 fours and a six, finishing with 169 off 203 balls in a partnership with Sourav Ganguly that was worth 300. It was a point well made, even if Pakistan were reduced to three front-line bowlers for half the day after Shoaib Akhtar had found yet another way to be unfit - back pain, this time.

Remarkably for a man who’s played 195 one-day internationals and who’s averaged near-enough 50 in that form of the game in the last two years, this is only Yuvraj’s 20th Test match.

Have no fear though, there’s plenty of time left. He’s not 26 until Wednesday, making him younger than Australia’s ‘prodigy’, Michael Clarke.

He’s a full year away from thinking ‘a nice sit-down’ is an activity in its own right and two away from knowing the names of more than one type of plant. He probably doesn’t consider going out two nights running to be any hardship at all, the rapscallion.

Tags: India, Pakistan, Yuvraj Singh by King Cricket
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Most reports of the third one-day international between India and Pakistan seem to have Yuvraj Singh down as the match-winner. In any report there has to be one guy who won the match, but that’s never the full story.

All eight Indian batsmen who came to the crease got into double figures and six Indian bowlers took a wicket, plus there were two run-outs. Having said that, Yuvraj top-scored for India with 77, took one of those wickets and was also responsible for one of those run-outs, so we suppose he had the largest impact.

Why are we trying to talk him down, anyway - Yuvraj is our guy.

Tags: India, Pakistan, Yuvraj Singh by King Cricket
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The answer, of course, is none. None better.

India were doing precisely nothing when he came to the crease in the Twenty20 World Cup semi-final against Australia. They were 41-2 after eight overs. ‘It’s too hard’ they seemed to be saying. ‘We can’t lay bat on ball’.

‘What?’ said Yuvraj Singh, utterly perplexed by his team mates’ inability to time the ball with absolute perfection. ‘Just do this,’ he instructed and promptly hit 70 runs off 30 balls, scything five fours and as many sixes.

If we were Yuvraj Singh, we’d feel perfectly happy about pointing at ourself in the mirror and saying ‘you the man’ because we’d be well aware that we were the man and wouldn’t be at all shy about letting ourself know this fact.

Tags: Australia, India, Yuvraj Singh by King Cricket
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Yuvraj Singh starts the over on 14. He ends it with 50.

Herschelle Gibbs managed six sixes in an over in the 50 over World Cup earlier in the year. His efforts were full-blooded across the line slogs. Yuvraj Singh’s were just timed. Just watch the delicate flick for the second one.

The adrenaline probably helped too, mind.

Tags: India, Yuvraj Singh by King Cricket
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How bloody good are we at saying other people are ace at cricket? We’re really bloody good at it - that’s how bloody good at it we are.

Perhaps it’s because we’ve spent our entire life honing our sense of how much everyone else is better than us. Show us someone and we’ll instantly tell you how they’re better than us.

Yuvraj Singh is better than us because he’s the finest one-day international batsman in the world. He’s better than us because he’s got rare talent, a great eye, unbelievable timing and astonishing power. He’s better than us because he managed to hit six sixes in an over.

The six sixes off poor, hapless Stuart Broad - who became visibly younger with each inevitable blow - formed the unusually brief bulk of his innings of 58 off (count ‘em) 16 balls.

Absolutely stunning and if the Indian public don’t go for Twenty20 now, they never will.

Tags: England, India, Yuvraj Singh by King Cricket
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We’ve made one or two rash pronouncements in our time. Fortunately most of them are now all-but-invisible on the old site.

However, we’re going to bring one to the fore today in a fairly transparent bid to make a player lose form for a couple of matches against England. This particular pronouncement was that Yuvraj Singh was the best one-day international batsman in the world.

We mention it now because since Yuvraj arrived in Ireland back in June, his one-day international innings run as follows: 13, 49 not out, 61 not out, 38, 0, 49, 45, 71 and 72.

There are no hundreds because he bats in the middle order and hundreds aren’t common in those parts. What’s impressive is his consistency. Measured run-chase? Yuvraj is your man. Wild slog to post a ludicrous total? Yuvraj is your man.

He’d probably have a few more if Ganguly’s knees were up to non-sedate singles too.

Tags: India, Yuvraj Singh by King Cricket
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