Living up truly to the adage ‘Like dad, like son’, Yograj Singh, father of the vice captain of the Indian one-day cricket team Yuvraj Singh—knows how to live life, king size.
Yograj Singh on his relationship with his son and Team India’s flamboyant player Yuvraj Singh
Living up truly to the adage ‘Like dad, like son’, Yograj Singh, father of the vice captain of the Indian one-day cricket team Yuvraj Singh—knows how to live life, king size. And he is candid enough to confess that he has left behind his trademark kurta pajama and donned a fitting T-shirt and jeans to look “uber-cool” on the photographer’s lens.
The not-so-cordial relationship between the father-son duo has made several headlines over the years. As Yograj himself admits, it was because of the intense pressure he put on Yuvraj to give up his interest in tennis and follow in his father’s footsteps into cricket instead.
Yograj had made his international debut for the Indian cricket team in 1980 and played just one test and a few one-day matches before losing his career to an injury on the field. Yograj claims that after that incident, he was unceremoniously dropped from the team and eventually unfairly chucked out of the state team also. For Yograj, it was a big blow. He rues, “I was upset and spent days crying. The shocking incident also led to the untimely demise of my father.”
He blatantly states, “Through my son’s game, I wanted to take revenge on all the people responsible for my early exit from cricket. I told him to stay away from girls and even friends before he could prove himself on the field.”
Yograj agrees that all his efforts created a big vacuum between father and son for many long years. He says, “Here, I was a father, whose own son was scared of him, but it did not bother me.” His behaviour towards his son of course didn’t go down well with the family—even Yograj’s mother left the house and returned to their native village.
He recounts, “She refused to call me her son. My wife too left me and went to her father’s house. However, he adds emphatically, “Even if Yuvi died while fulfilling my dreams and my honour, I would be a proud father!”
Yograj doesn’t sound too happy with all the pampering that Yuvi has got from his mother Shabnam. He emphatically states, “A mother can give birth and maintain a house. But she can never show the right path to the child. It’s a man’s job. I have ruled my family with an iron hand.”
Putting an end to all speculations that things aren’t well between dad and son, he says, “Yuvi and I are friends now. Though I see him twice or thrice a year, he calls me more often. When we do meet, we work out together in the gym.”
And now that Yuvi is taking care of his dad’s dream, Yograj is all set to debut in television, after more than 150 films back home in Punjab. He promises that his reel life character in Mohe Rang De on Colors will be akin to his real-life character. And that’s not all. Yograj also reveals that Yuvi’s younger brother Zorawar is all set to make his debut in cinema soon.
c_sujata@dnaindia.net
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