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.

Reading allows me to recharge my batteries.

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.

Pravin Tambe is bigger inspiration than me for young cricketers

You get an image in the first couple of years of your career, and then whether you like it or not, you are stuck with it for the rest of your life.

There is no substitute to taking a lot of a catches as a youngster if you want to do slip catching - you've got to catch, catch, catch. And more than doing the normal stuff, you have to vary your catching - you've got to take some catches with the tennis ball, you got to take some closer, some further away.

No dream is ever chased alone.