The great Yuvraj Singh is a happily retired India cricketer now, playing leagues around the world, and not ruling out possibility of becoming a coach in the near future.
Yuvraj is currently turning up for Maratha Arabians in the third edition of the T10 league in Abu Dhabi having earlier this year played in the Global T20 Canada League after receiving permission from the BCCI post-retirement call.
But he isn't one to rush into things, prudently approaching life step by step.
"I haven't really decided yet if I want to coach or not in the IPL or something like that," Yuvraj told reporters. "I'm going to get into it slowly. At the moment, I'm very happy playing leagues outside India."
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"I get to see new countries, play with different players, and there are a lot of leagues coming up in next 2-3 years. So I'm looking forward to playing a few leagues."
"It's good for me, I play two or three months of cricket rather than the whole year, and I can relax for around 8-9 months," he added.
"So it's good, I'm enjoying for the next 2-3 years and then can hopefully get into coaching which I can practice side by side."
T10 must be a completely new experience for Yuvraj, who played over 400 international games for India during an illustrious 19-year-long career. "The speed of the game has increased and we've become slow!" he says. "It took a while to get used to, you've got to be ready before you go in and remain switched on because there's hardly any time (in this format). I think we bounced back very well after losing the first game."
"We sorted our plan out after getting used to the conditions, after which we had two outstanding wins. It's amazing how the game has changed over the years, players are getting close to scoring a 100 in a T10 game."
About to turn 38 in December, Yuvraj said he has been focusing on his fitness a lot these days. "I try and train pretty hard. As I get older I have to train harder. I had a back spasm today so I can't really fight my body too much," he said.
"I think mentally I'm still young but the body says take it easy, so hopefully I'll be fit for the next game."
Yuvraj gets really excited talking about the new crop of batting talent around Indian cricket, someone like Shubman Gill, for example.
"Everybody says Gill is going to be the biggest thing in Indian cricket," he said. "Hopefully that happens. He's in the mix, and very soon his opportunity is going to come. A lot of eyes are on him. Hopefully, given the right number of chances, I'm sure he will do really well."
(Inputs from CricketNext)
