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.

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 am what I am. I have not deliberately built an image for myself.

The bowlers I respected or feared or rated were not the ones who gave me lip or stared at me or abused me. More the ones who, at any stage of the game, when had they had the ball in hand, they were going to be at me, and they were going to have the skill and the fitness and the ability to be aggressive.

Pravin Tambe is bigger inspiration than me for young cricketers

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.

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