Yuvraj Singh’s dad Yograj recalls saying ‘I will shoot myself’ if son didn’t play cricket; threw 5-year-old Yuvi’s medals, skates out the car

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He recalled giving a plastic bat to Yuvraj when he was almost a year and a half old and upon hitting the ball, he applied so much force that he managed to break the window pane. Yograj said that by this time, he had not taught anything to his son. “I thought that this boy is a package. He had just started walking then,” he said.

Yograj said that as Yuvraj started growing up, he started playing tennis and skating and was starting to lose interest in cricket. To bring him back to cricket, Yograj did something drastic. He shared, “I wanted my son to get revenge for me, from the system, the selectors, and all those who laughed at me,” he recalled. Yograj once played cricket with Kapil Dev, who eventually became one of the most popular players of his era.

Yograj threw 5-year-old Yuvraj’s medals, skates of out the car

“Yuvraj was skating at a competition one day and he got a lot of medals. We sat in the car and I took his medals and threw them out of the car. This was the wrong thing to do. Then I took his skates and threw them out and he started crying,” he recalled. As the young Yuvraj cried, Yograj roared, “Shut up.” Since he had a “very bad temper”, Yuvraj and his mother didn’t say much in the car.

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Upon returning home, Yograj’s mother told him to get out of the house if he was going to trouble Yuvraj in this manner. “She told me it’s better if you die. She told me that if you are going to treat my grandson like this, you better get out of the house. She abused me a lot. I told them, I said, ‘Either I will live in this house, or he will. I want him to play cricket, and I will not let go until he plays. You can do whatever you want to,” he said.

Yograj proudly announced that he turned Yuvraj into someone who played cricket even while battling cancer. “This is how champions are made,” he declared.