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Old warhorse Yuvraj Singh regains lost paradise in IPL 2016

There's spring in his walk. There's aggression in his eyes. There's purpose in his approach. The swagger in Yuvraj Singh is back and how.

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Yuvraj Singh recently completed 4,000 runs in IPL © AFP

There is spring in his walk. There is aggression in his eyes. There is purpose in his approach. The swagger in Yuvraj Singh is back and how. Not long ago we doubted if there is still gas left in the tank, if he is still the same force he was half a decade ago. Well, he just quashed all the talks about his lost paradise. He is back to hitting sixes at will. He is back to fielding at point. He is back to playing innings of substance at crucial junctures. The game-changer in Yuvi is back to his old self. In fact, he has added dimension to Sunrisers Hyderabad’s (SRH’s) mighty force ever since his comeback. FULL CRICKET SCORECARD: Gujarat Lions vs Sunrisers Hyderabad, IPL 2016, Qualifier 2 at Delhi

Yuvi rays shine on SRH: Yuvraj missed out first half of the tournament due to an ankle injury he sustained during the ICC World T20 2016. With he being out of the playing XI, SRH batting line-up heavily revolved around captain David Warner and the experienced Shikhar Dhawan. The middle-order looked out of sorts. They needed someone who can take the team out of the woods. Enter Yuvraj, and SRH win 5 out of the 8 matches ever since his return.

Yuvraj’s spectacular batsmanship: He has bludgeoned 190 runs at 27.14 with a splendid strike rate of 132.9. And, in the 5 matches SRH tasted victory, he has plundered 153 runs, which shows how heavily the SRH middle-order depends on the southpaw. These matches include the scores of 5 (14), 39 (23), 23 (21), 42 (24) and 44 (30). He simply keeps scaling up his performance. Read: Yuvraj Singh completes 4,000 runs in T20 cricket

Yuvraj’s brave show of character: Yuvraj’s match-winning 44-run knock against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in the Eliminator shows his brave show of character. He came in when SRH had already lost Warner, Dhawan and Moises Henriques. They were 71 for 3 after 9.5 overs. They needed someone to step up and post at least 160 against the might of KKR’s bowling. But, to make this happen, they needed someone to put up an audacious fight and take the bull by the horns. The track was sluggish. Even the likes of Warner struggled to time the ball. Plus, the opposition had a mystery spinner in Sunil Narine and a Chinaman bowler in Kuldeep Yadav.

Clearing boundaries with ease against such bowling arsenal was an uphill task. But Yuvraj picked his moments. He took Kuldeep to the cleaners, and at the same time, put a value on his wicket against Narine and Morne Morkel.

He scored almost half the runs in the second half of the SRH innings, studded with 8 fours and a six; it explains the importance of his presence in the SRH line-up. Read — Yuvraj Singh: I will hit 6 sixes again

Yuvraj is back fielding at point: In SRH’s previous match we saw Yuvraj stationed at point the way he used to do in his heydays, he was pulling off athletic dives to save certain boundaries. Moreover, MS Dhoni’s run out in one of the last-over thrillers as well as the direct hit to dismiss Colin Munro against KKR is an evidence to the fact that the old warhorse is back to his prime.

If he gets going against Gujarat Lions (GL) in tonight’s Qualifier 2, there is no stopping SRH from reaching the final of IPL 9.

(Kaustubh S. Mayekar, a reporter at CricketCountry, played cricket at U-16 level. Like his idol Rahul Dravid, he often shadow-practises cricket shots. His Twitter handle is @kaumedy_)

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