First, he denied it. Then, he found courage to face it and finally, he won his battle against cancer. Yuvraj Singh looks back on his journey in this 2018 video.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00The doctor said, it's a tumour, your son has cancer.
00:04I said, doctor, he's lying.
00:06I won't sit on a wheelchair, no matter how sick I get.
00:09The next day, in the paper,
00:12in the news, everywhere,
00:15it was like, my cricket career is over.
00:30In 2010, I woke up one day, I was sleeping at night and I coughed a lot.
00:46I woke up, went to the bathroom, coughed,
00:51there was a little blood.
00:57So I said, something is wrong.
01:00The next day, I met my physio, I told him that I was having trouble breathing.
01:04I was having trouble breathing in the match.
01:08I was running the run, I couldn't breathe.
01:11So I told my physio that I couldn't breathe from the left side,
01:14I was having trouble.
01:16So our doctor said, get it checked.
01:21I said, okay, once this tournament is over,
01:22we'll go to India and get it checked.
01:25We went to India, the World Cup camp started.
01:28So I said, I won't get it checked, because I know something is wrong.
01:32Let's focus on the game.
01:33So, we won the World Cup.
01:36Yuvraj Singh, Man of the Series, four Man of the Match,
01:39one trophy Man of the Series.
01:43Suddenly, from low to high, I was on top of my world.
01:46I was 29 years old, I was at the peak of my career.
01:51It was a dream.
01:52After that, I was coughing a lot.
01:55We had a four-month tour to England.
01:57The doctor said, you're coughing a lot, get a scan done.
02:01I said, what's the point of a scan?
02:02I was bleeding.
02:03He said, what happened?
02:04I said, we have to go to India and play.
02:05If the soldiers can take a bullet,
02:09why can't we play with the blood?
02:12After that, the doctor came.
02:13He said, we have a serious problem.
02:16He said, come inside the room.
02:18I went inside the room, I said, yes, tell me.
02:20He said, look at this scan.
02:21It was a scan of two lungs.
02:25You can see the lungs.
02:26On one lung, it was completely white.
02:29You couldn't see the lungs at all.
02:32It was completely white.
02:33I don't know how to see scans.
02:36So, I told the doctor,
02:37on one side, it's black and white, and on the other side…
02:41He said, there's nothing visible on your left lung.
02:47You'll have to get a biopsy done.
02:51I said, doctor, tell me seriously, what's the problem?
02:54The doctor said, I think there's a tumor on your left lung.
02:58I said, doctor, I'm an athlete.
03:03I practice 5-6 hours a day.
03:06I have a very healthy lifestyle.
03:09I eat well, I drink well, I sleep well.
03:11I can't have a tumor.
03:13Do you understand?
03:14There's a doctor, a family doctor.
03:17He actually got the reports.
03:19And he called me.
03:20He said, Yuvraj Singh,
03:24have you lost your mind?
03:26I said, son,
03:28I said some cancer terminology.
03:31You only have 3-6 months left.
03:36So, it took me a year to accept that I have cancer.
03:41Anyways, I went through chemotherapy.
03:45I struggled a lot.
03:49I can't really say what the treatment was.
03:51I went through so many difficulties.
03:53I started exercising, but I became weak.
03:56My body...
03:57There were some kids on a wheelchair.
04:00I said, I won't sit on a wheelchair.
04:02No matter how sick I get, I won't sit on a wheelchair.
04:05But eventually,
04:07after the third cycle, I had to sit on a wheelchair.
04:09But when I was going through that moment,
04:12I always thought that I'll come back and play for India.
04:15The doctors said,
04:16if you survive,
04:18after two or three years, you can start playing again.
04:22I came back and played for India after six months.
04:25Guys, write your own destiny.
04:28Anyways, I played for India after six months.
04:31I struggled.
04:32My body wasn't the same.
04:34Failures after failures, failures after failures.
04:36Life had become about failures.
04:38Because everyone said that my cricket career is over.
04:41My body wasn't the same.
04:43There was a T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka.
04:46In the final of T20 World Cup,
04:48Yuvraj Singh scored 11 runs and scored 21 balls in the final.
04:52Worst performance of my cricket career.
04:53The next day, it was all over the news.
04:57It was like,
04:58cricket career is over. Worst performance of his life.
05:01He's over.
05:02Pretty much.
05:03I was so devastated.
05:04I thought that my career is over.
05:08Tendulkar told me that
05:10one match can't define my career.
05:16So, start again.
05:18I started playing.
05:20I was about 30, 33, 34.
05:23I played domestically.
05:25I scored a lot of runs in domestic cricket that year.
05:28After that, I got famous in the Indian team again.
05:31I came back to one-day cricket after three years.
05:33Everyone said that I won't be able to come back.
05:40I scored around 800 runs in domestic cricket in five matches.
05:42I came back after that.
05:43And I scored 150 runs in the first match against England.
05:54It was the best score of my one-day cricket career.
06:00When everyone said that my career is over,
06:03I scored my highest one-day score.
06:06Because I never gave up.