If someone thinks, ‘I’ll spend the off season working on my fitness and I’ll come back a better cricketer,’ I don’t think that’s enough. You need to spend a lot of time working on your skills and honing your skills.
I have the kind of personality that I always look ahead than look at what’s happened. It does help a lot, especially when you’ve done badly or you’ve failed. It’s instinctive of me that I look at what’s next, I look ahead a lot, and start preparing for that, in victory and in defeat.
He is a great leader by example. Someone whom I have always admired for his ability to remain balanced and have the sense of equanimity about his captaincy.
Administrators are there because of the fans and the cricketers to run this game, so credibility of a game, or a board, or even a government for that matter, is important irrespective of what you do. If you are in public life it is important.
In a cricket career, your life is in some ways controlled for you. You have no control over schedules, you have no control about where you want to play, you don’t have control over that as a cricketer.
I was like every other boy in India, with a dream of playing for my country. Yet I could never have imagined a journey so long and so fulfilling. No dream is ever chased alone.
Sometimes fitness is a good thing to have, but you have to recognise that fitness takes you only so far, and skills are the most important thing. Fitness just helps you execute those cricketing skills for longer and more consistently, maybe.
I was in the hockey team in school, played football. One of the challenges for me was to make the team feel better. It helped me evolve, so batting at different positions was never a problem.
A career in sport is almost impossible to manage without the support, and guidance, and reassurance of family and friends. During tough times, and there always are, this is whom we go to.
Playing in the same team as Sachin is a huge honour. His balance of mind, shrewd judgment, modesty and, above all, his technical brilliance make him my all-time hero. You can’t get a more complete cricketer than Sachin. He has everything that a cricketer needs to have.
Cricket is just something that I am good at, just like various people are good at various things. What’s lucky is that cricket gets enormous publicity.
What drew me towards team sport were the camaraderie and friendship. The chance to celebrate victory and success with a group of other people is something I have enjoyed doing.
I was given a talent to play cricket. I don’t know why I was given it. But I was. I owe it to all those who wish it had been them to give of my best, every day.
Sachin Tendulkar is already a ‘Bharat Ratna’ for Indian people because of his phenomenal success and the manner in which he has served Indian cricket for years.
