Former India cricketer Yograj Singh has opened up on his battle with loneliness and strained family ties, saying that he has been spending time alone in his hometown and has nothing left in his life to witness or experience.
"I sit alone in the evening, have no one at home. I rely on strangers for food, sometimes one person, sometimes the other. I don’t bother anyone though. Someone or the others gets food for me if I am hungry. I kept house help and cooks, they served and went away," Yograj said in an interview for Vintage Studio.
“I love my mother, kids, daughter-in-law, grandchildren, everyone in the family. But, I don’t ask for anything. I am ready to die. My life is completed, whenever God wants, he can take me with him. I am so thankful to God, I pray and he keeps giving,” he added.
Talking about Yograj’s personal life, he first married Shabnam Kaur, with whom he had two sons, Yuvraj and Zoravar. The marriage eventually ended amidst constant marital conflict.
Subsequently, Yograj tied knot for the second time with Neena Bundhel (also known as Satbir Kaur), with whom he has a son, Victor, and a daughter, Amarjot.
The critical moment, Yograj says, came when Shabnam and Yuvraj left his home. "When things came at a point where Yuvi and his mother left me, it gave me the biggest shock. The woman for whom I dedicated my entire life, all of my youth, they can also leave me and go away?"
"A lot of things got destroyed like this. I asked God why all of this was happening when I did everything right by everyone. I might have made some mistakes, but I am an innocent man, didn’t do anything bad to anyone. I cried in front of God, he took me out of that sea," he said.
The 67-year-old often wonders why he has no one to accompany him now that he is old. “It was God’s play, what was written for me. There was a lot of anger and feeling of revenge. Then cricket came in my life, got discontinued, made Yuvi play cricket, he played and left. Then, I got married again, had two kids, they also left for the US. A few films also released, time passed away and came back to the point where it all started. I was asking myself that I did all of this for what? Do you have anyone with you now? This should have happened with me, happened for good," he said.
Yograj Singh’s cricket career was brief but promising. A fiery right-arm pacer from Punjab, he featured in one Test and six ODIs for India in the early 1980s before injuries curtailed his rise.
Despite the short stint, Yograj continues to stay connected to the game, working actively as a coach in Punjab.
