If you don't ask for the best, you don't get it.

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.

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.

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.

While I played Ranji Trophy for five years, I used to be asked, 'When are you playing for the nation?' - a question which I didn't have any answer to. I kept playing before I got my first break in 1996; those five years were indeed frustrating.

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.

Pravin Tambe is bigger inspiration than me for young cricketers