Self-awareness helped me: Yuvraj

After his impressive showing against the visiting West Indies A and in the Challenger Series, Yuvraj Singh was included in the squad for the first T20I and three ODIs against Australia. The left-hander, who was dropped after a string of poor scores in January this year, top-scored in the ODI series against West Indies and led his team to victory in the Challenger Series last week.
Explaining the change during the period, the left-hander said to The Times of India, “I am much fitter now and mentally, I am quite refreshed after spending time on my fitness. I have spent some time with myself, which made me aware of my surroundings.”
“Ultimately , my self-awareness helped the most. Spending time with Zak ( Zaheer Khan) also helped a lot. We discussed a lot about how to get back to our best form and the kind of fitness needed to get to that level.”

The cancer survivor explained what he did to recover fully from the effects of chemotherapy and said, “…it takes time to recover from chemotherapy. It stays in your body and the doctors had intimated me about the whole process.”

“Despite training so hard, I felt that I needed to be slimmer and trimmer. The running between the wickets had to be quicker as also my overall movement. The aftermath of the medicines I took was also there. So I had to work extra hard to lose fat, besides working on every aspect of the game.”

Yuvraj was one of the senior players to be dropped for the Champions Trophy. However, the 31-year old took the time to work on his fitness.
“That time, it was tough on the body more than anything else, but as I said I knew it would take some time to get 100 per cent fit. But this experience helped me get a good assessment of my mind and body for sure.”