Yuvraj blasts Indian team management for WC ouster

Yuvraj Singh on Tuesday slammed the Indian team management for the country's World Cup ouster in the semifinals, saying its planning for the 50 over tournament was "completely wrong".

Pre-tournament favourites India went into the World Cup without settling the number four spot and it affected the team as Virat Kohli's men made a semifinal exit from the marquee event.

"In this World cup, they dropped (Ambati) Rayudu and then they had Vijay Shankar, who had some injury and then Rishabh Pant came in. I have nothing against them but both played five ODI games, I mean how do you expect a guy with such less experience to win big matches," Yuvraj questioned.

"My issue is what the think-tank was doing. Dinesh Karthik was going through the tournament and suddenly he plays the semifinals and a guy like MS Dhoni is batting at no 7. It was all hotchpotch. You can't do that in such big matches, you have to be sure.

"Your No. 4 batsman had a highest score of 48, so I thought the planning was really poor, because they were thinking that Rohit, Virat is in good form but teams don't win like that. If you look at Australia, if you look at 2003, 2011, 2015, they had set batsmen, so I thought the planning was completely wrong."
"When we were going to play the 2003 World Cup, the team that played the tournaments in the lead-up, We almost played with the same team. We had decent experience, me and Mohammad Kaif played about 35-40 games. Our top-order was highly experienced and the middle order was decently experienced."
"It was like your work is done, so you leave now and we need to make a new team. Why do you need a new team? You need it when the team has not won. We won the World Cup and you should take the team forward."
"So basically, I don't know what was the agenda, what was the motive? And whose was it? I don't know. There are things which have been going on in Indian cricket and I think this has to change. I mean, if you have done something for Indian cricket, you need to be respected. A lot of players have left with angst."