I always wanted to play cricket, and I have played competitive cricket to a fairly good level. I remember that my father used to come and watch me play. He used to love watching me play.
When I was a kid, I used to try and hit every ball out of the ground. After playing one-day cricket and Test cricket, I never thought I'd get a chance to play like that again, ever. Twenty20 has given me the opportunity of playing like a kid again. I can just feel free and go out there and hit.
Although I was good at my studies, I also thought to myself that I should play cricket as well. And when the cricket team that consisted of the boys from our village used to play, I was able to play with the team that had older players.
If you look at cricket per se, if you didn't have T20 cricket, Test cricket will die. People don't realise. You just play Test cricket, and don't play one-day cricket and T20 cricket, and speak to me after 10 years. The economics will just not allow the game to survive.
When I was a kid I wanted to be a musician. I used to play the trumpet. I practiced all the time, but I got braces and I couldn't play it anymore, so I had all of this free time.
My dad and my brother were more keen on football, but I used to play canvas-ball cricket while at school in Ranchi, and we would have cricket coaching camps in the summer vacations. That's how I started.
In red ball cricket, with the field placements, you can look around, take your time, because you have five days to play, whereas in limited overs cricket, you have limited number of balls to play and score.
As a kid in New Zealand, you play cricket in summer and rugby in winter. I played cricket and hockey. Not rugby. I wasn't brawny enough for it. Or silly enough, perhaps.
I used to play rugby, polo, tennis, and cricket in school. It was only in the 1990s, when I used to live just opposite Harrods in London, that I started putting on weight. I used to have my breakfast there every day.
From a small age, we used to play a lot of school cricket: 30-35 games in a year in school cricket, then Under-16 games.
I used to play tennis ball cricket quite a lot before playing serious cricket. Over there, you bowl yorkers. That could be the reason I bowl yorkers.
I've been to a lot of places to play cricket, but cricket and training get in the way! In India, all you see is the hotel and the cricket ground.
Obviously, international cricket is the main cricket you want to play, especially Test cricket.
If you are going to raise youngsters for Test cricket that don't have the experience, you can't stick them into T20. You've got to teach them first how to play Test cricket, and when they're good enough for Test cricket and if they want to play both formats, then they can.
I'd urge any kid to want to play Test cricket.
There is no reason why cricket shouldn't be the number one alternative to football. And at a time when there are obvious divisions in society, cricket has a great role to play in bringing people together from all sorts of diverse backgrounds and faiths.