Yograj Singh, the father of ex-Indian cricketer Yuvraj Singh, has recently made some revelations about his childhood, which has created a lot of buzz.
Yograj told Switch in an interview that he has a story that he feels reflects the kind of attitude that young cricketers need to have to join his academy.
When Yograj was asked what attitude young athletes should have, he replied without any hesitation, “First of all, the fear of death should end.” He narrated a spine-chilling incident of how he had once faced the tigress in the forests of Kaladhungi when he was just three years of age and was accompanying his father, who was tiger hunting.
Yograj was very specific in narrating how they were seated on an elevated platform as a tiger came close. His mother clamped his mouth shut lest he screamed, and his father fired in the tiger at point-blank range of six feet. “He fell like a mountain,” Yograj repeated, stressing how this moment changed him.
Yograj’s father put the blood of the tiger on his lips and forehead after the hunt, saying, ‘A tiger cub doesn’t eat grass.’ Yograj still remembers this incident and his philosophy of fearlessness, which he teaches his students.
Yograj Singh has been quite vocal in the past and has criticized legends of the game like MS Dhoni and Kapil Dev. In the recent past, he blamed Dhoni for ‘killing’ Yuvraj’s career and also had a lot of bitterness against Kapil Dev for some wrongs done to him during his playing career.
