If you don't execute on your plans, then you don't reach anywhere.

I have never tried to compare myself to anyone else.

Any active sportsman has to be very focused; you've got to be in the right frame of mind. If your energy is diverted in various directions, you do not achieve the results. I need to know when to switch on and switch off: and the rest of the things happen around that. Cricket is in the foreground, the rest is in the background.

At the start of my career, when I used to toss and turn at night, I was fighting that feeling and wanting to go to sleep. Now I know that's normal, so I'll just get up and watch TV or something. I know it's just my subconscious mind getting ready for a game.

I need at least two months to try and figure out where the centre of the bat is.

Critics haven't taught me my cricket, and they don't know what my body and mind are up to.

From the spinners, Anil and I have been together for a long time and I respect him a lot.