'Sachin sat down with team & said...': Yuvraj recalls reaction after losing to SA in WC

The ICC ODI World Cup is only 6 days away from the tournament opener, as New Zealand will face the defending champions, England, on October 5, 2023. India will be the lone host of the tournament for the very first time in history, and it makes it the right time for the Indian Cricket Team to end their ICC trophy drought for 10 years. India won the ICC ODI World Cup 2011, and Rohit Sharma and his team will be looking to repeat history this year. 

3 things you need to know 

• Team India recently won the Asia Cup 2023
• MS Dhoni led India in the ODI WC 2011
• Yuvraj Singh was the Player of the Tournament in the 2011 ODI World Cup

Also Read: World Cup 2023: As Team India loses Axar Patel, A look at injury concerns of various teams

Yuvraj Singh has big advice for Rohit Sharma and Team India

Recalling a motivational team talk he received from renowned cricketer Sachin Tendulkar during the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup, Yuvraj Singh, the winner of the Player of the Tournament Award, recently shared his story. The Cricket World Cup is a prestigious and fiercely contested competition. The players in India, where cricket is extremely important, are under even more strain because of the high expectations of the cricket community there. Even the smallest mistake by the athletes can lead to heavy public scrutiny.

Team India will play their opening match of the 2023 World Cup in Chennai on October 8th, against Australia. The squad will play warm-up matches against England and the Netherlands before the competition. That comes after winning the Asia Cup 2023 and the 3 match ODI series against Australia by 2-1. 

In order to illustrate the effect that public and media criticism had on the team after their loss to South Africa, Yuvraj Singh recently offered anecdotal evidence from the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup. The team's morale suffered as a result of the intensive public and media scrutiny, even though social media was not as common at the time. As the team's stress increased, Sachin Tendulkar took command and held an emergency meeting with the goal of assisting the group in regaining focus and control.  Recalling the story from 2011, Yuvraj Singh said: 

Now, distraction is a bit more because that time there was no social media. There was a distraction with media and people. We were trying to focus on the game, and in the World Cup, we had lost to South Africa – a game we should have won. The media started to go berserk. Sachin sat down with the team and said, ‘We need to stop watching television, stop reading the papers. Use our headphones when we are going through crowds in airports. Just focus on the World Cup’. The team agreed, we just followed that and it really worked,

Also Read: '100m six should be 10 runs': Rohit Sharma wants more runs for longer boundaries in ODIs

What is India’s squad for the ICC ODI World Cup 2023?

Rohit Sharma (c), Hardik Pandya (vc), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Shami, R. Ashwin, Ishan Kishan, Suryakumar Yadav.