Yuvraj Singh hit six sixes in an over, then came back from cancer
At the 2007 World Twenty20, Yuvraj Singh hit Stuart Broad for six sixes in one over, the first time it had happened in a match between two Test nations. Four years later he starred at the 2011 World Cup, and soon after was undergoing chemotherapy for a cancerous tumour in his left lung.
Born on 12 December 1981, the son of the former India cricketer and actor Yograj Singh, he preferred tennis and roller skating as a boy and won a national under-14 skating title, but his father threw the medal away and drove him to cricket practice every day. He played for Punjab Under-16s at 13 years and 11 months, and in the 1999 Cooch Behar Trophy final made 358 by himself, one more than Bihar's entire total of 357.
Named Player of the Tournament at the 2000 Under-19 World Cup, which India won under Mohammad Kaif, he joined the first intake of the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru and played ODIs for India from 2000 to 2017, making his Test debut in October 2003. In the 2007 Broad match he also reached fifty in 12 balls, an international record until Dipendra Airee beat it at the 2023 Asian Games.
The 2011 World Cup was his peak: 362 runs at an average of 90.50 and 15 wickets at an economy rate of 5.02, and he became the first player to score a fifty and take five wickets in the same World Cup match. That year he was diagnosed with lung cancer and treated in Boston and Indianapolis, finishing his final round of chemotherapy in March 2012 and returning to international cricket that September against New Zealand.
He received the Arjuna Award in 2012 and the Padma Shri in 2014, the year Royal Challengers Bengaluru paid 14 crore rupees for him at the IPL auction; the Delhi franchise paid 16 crore a year later. He retired from international cricket on 10 June 2019, having last played for India in June 2017. His 7 Player of the Series awards in ODIs equal Sourav Ganguly's tally.
Source: Yuvraj Singh
