Yuvraj seeks educated approach to Twenty20 batting

Yuvraj Singh has said that his team would employ a cerebral approach to batting © Getty Images

Yuvraj Singh, India's vice-captain for the inaugural Twenty20 World Championship, has said that his team plans to employ an educated approach to batting.

The Twenty20 format has generally been one in which the batsmen try to sock it to the bowlers from the outset, but Yuvraj said India would employ a more cerebral approach in South Africa.

"You have less time to settle in Twenty20 cricket and you need to play your shots earlier. But you can't just go out there and slog, you still need to play good cricket and you need to think about how to get a good score. You need to work really hard in a short time," Yuvraj said in an ICC conference call from Bristol on Thursday.

Yuvraj acknowledged that the schedule would make an impact on his team, but there was also a plus side to all the cricket. "Playing seven one-day internationals takes a lot out of you, but by playing every second day in England, it gets us into the same mode as the World Twenty20s," he said.

Despite resting Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid, India still have a couple of heavyweight hitters in Mahendra Singh Dhoni and the recalled Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj is expecting him to land some knockout blows in South Africa.

"Twenty20 is very suited to Virender's game and I'm looking forward to some firecrackers from him. Yes, he's had a bad patch, but every top player has one. Virender has been a top player for a long, long time, our best opener since Sunil Gavaskar."

India will be based in Durban, where they will be under the glare of the largest expatriate population of their countrymen in the world, but Yuvraj said the team was looking forward to going to South Africa.

"South Africa is a lucky place for us, we made the final in the last World Cup there and we always get great support there. They are lovely people and there are a high number of Indians in Durban, so I'm sure there will be full crowds, especially when we play Pakistan. It will be great to be with them," Yuvraj said.

"In Twenty20, you need to play different shots, run very hard and set different fields. You don't have much time out there, so you have to make sure you are very sharp."

India also have to deal with a daunting schedule that sees them grabbing their airline tickets for South Africa almost immediately after their 10-week tour of the United Kingdom. They will then play their group stage Twenty20 games on September 13 and 14, and their three Super Eights matches are down for September 16, 19 and 20.