'Personal comments stayed with me': Yuvraj Singh explains reason for avoiding commentary

Sports Tak

Sports Tak

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 Yuvraj Singh looks on during the ICC Men's T20 Cricket World Cup West Indies & USA 2024 match between India and Pakistan at Nassau County International Cricket Stadium on June 09, 2024 (Getty)
Yuvraj Singh looks on during the ICC Men's T20 Cricket World Cup West Indies & USA 2024 match between India and Pakistan at Nassau County International Cricket Stadium on June 09, 2024 (Getty)

Story Highlights:

Yuvraj Singh retired in 2019.

Yuvraj Singh mentored Abhishek Sharma.

India's Cricketing legend Yuvraj Singh opened up on why he chose not to take up live commentary after retiring from cricket. He said he doesn’t feel comfortable working with people who, in the past, made personal remarks about him instead of just talking about his game.

Yuvraj, who retired in 2019 and is known as one of India’s best limited-overs players, decided to focus on other things like business ventures and coaching instead of going into broadcasting, which many former cricketers usually do.

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Why did Yuvraj Singh avoid commentary?

He explained that some comments made about him stayed with him because they crossed the line and became personal, not just about cricket. That experience made him step away from commentary.

“Now that I have retired, I’ll say this," Singh said on Sports Tak. “People who have talked about me, not on cricket, but made personal comments about me. I think if you talk about someone’s game, it’s understandable, it’s a game. When you get personal, those comments stick forever with you. I don’t want to sit and do commentary with people who have made personal comments about me. That’s the reason I don’t want to do commentary. Commentary is a great place to talk about the game. But that’s one reason I don’t want to do it," he added.

 

How does Yuvraj Singh mentor players?

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Yuvraj Singh has been closely supporting a few players from his state, including Abhishek Sharma and Prabhsimran Singh, helping them grow in their careers. More recently, he also guided Sanju Samson in the lead-up to the 2026 T20 World Cup.

“Coming to Sanju Samson, who failed in 8-10 innings, was going through failure. That’s where you need to say, I need to change something. Sanju had reached that stage where he felt he was not finding a place in the XI. He had scored two hundreds in South Africa, so I felt… the conversation I had with him happened in 2024 when India won that World Cup in Barbados. In that World Cup, Sanju was not playing. I had been watching his batting for 2-3 IPL seasons. I told him we would speak whenever he had time."

 

“So my issue with Sanju was, you have to improve your footwork. If you don’t improve your footwork, you will consistently land in trouble. Scoring runs or not is different, but you have to improve your footwork. I gave him some ideas on how to improve it," Yuvraj said.