Strong body language wards off trouble - Yuvraj

Yuvraj Singh, the India batsman, has said players must find a way to keep anyone suspicious at bay by sending out a message that says, "Don't mess with me". He was responding, during an interview with ESPNcricinfo, to questions on the spot-fixing controversy and the players' dilemma in spotting dubious strangers in a crowd.

"These things happen when you invite them," Yuvraj said. "You know what kind of people are around, what they are trying to do, and I'm not saying only bookies or people like that." What could a cricketer do? "When you meet people, I believe you have to present a kind of body language that says, 'Do not mess with me, or even think of saying anything strange to me'.

Yuvraj said, in the course of their careers, cricketers met, "a lot of people who will try and give you advice or want you to get into bad stuff" but it was up to the player to keep his distance and send out the right signal. If you could do that, he said, "Nobody can come and touch you, nobody can point a finger at you." It was, he said, the reason that he had never thought of himself as "vulnerable".

Three Pakistani cricketers were questioned by Scotland Yard and suspended by the ICC for allegedly bowling pre-determined no-balls during the Lord's Test against England. "This [controversy] is very sad for the game and for Pakistan cricket," Yuvraj said. "The England-Pakistan series was going so well, Pakistan had won a Test match, everyone was excited and suddenly this comes up".

The controversy, Yuvraj said, also had damaging side-effects for the rest of the game. "The moment someone is accused, everyone else starts getting accused too ... now they say something was wrong in IPL or the India-Sri Lanka 411 game was fixed. That's not done." Reports making statements of this kind, he said, required an element of proof. "If you have evidence, please show the evidence. You can't be printing stories just to create hype, by merely saying that match was fixed, this match was fixed."