Is Yuvraj146;s form a cause for concern?

Chaminda Vaas likes to show off the tattoo on his leading arm that says 8216;Days of Grace8217;, and Wednesday afternoon gave the left-arm seamer the perfect occasion. He foxed Yuvraj Singh to play into the hands of Mahela Jayawardene at short mid-wicket, and the entire Premadasa Stadium felt the vibrations of his 400th one-day wicket.

Yuvraj walked back without scoring 8212; his second duck in the last five innings and his fourth consecutive failure in the one-day series. The Indian vice-captain has just one half-century in the last ten innings. In a series where Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni has been leading by example and other youngsters have been scoring under pressure situations to bail out the team, Yuvraj8217;s failure has been a sharp contrast. He is yet to score a century in 21 one-dayers this year, and has only three half-centuries for an aggregate of 551 runs at a mediocre average of 29.

Yuvraj had a similar string of low scores in Australia, where Dhoni had backed him to the hilt before the left-hander came back with a Man of the Match knock in Adelaide. Dhoni was under pressure then for having kept out Sehwag while persisting with Yuvraj in the XI.

Dhoni8217;s defence then had been that Yuvraj was a proven match-winner and that it was just a matter of time before he came up with a big score.

Over the course of this series, Dhoni has repeatedly said that the seniors in the team 8212; of which there are very few 8212; needed to pull their weight and the Indian vice-captain, who lost his place in the Test squad recently, will be hoping to come up with something special in the last match of the series.