I have always enjoyed playing cricket in every format and tried to produce my best and bring the best out of the national team.
Test cricket is a different format, you have to adjust to five-day cricket.
We have to understand that the five-day format has its own uncertainties, unlike ODIs or T20s. In ODIs, you know that you have to field for 50 overs only, while in Test cricket, there may be a situation that a team might bat for one-and-a-half to two days.
I guess my game plan in ODI cricket is very set with the new ball and at the death. In Test cricket, you have to bowl longer and batsmen don't have to score as quickly. But at the same time, as a bowler, you can bring in some aspects of one format to the other format.
The beauty of Test cricket is all about playing an opponent in their backyard or defending home turf under challenging conditions over five days - dominating each session, dominating each day, picking 20 wickets to win a contest. That's historically been cricket's most fascinating gift.
As a player, I like playing as much cricket as possible, irrelevant of the format.
As a format, I have watched shows from the West. I have tried to understand what it is and how this format is treated by writers, directors, and actors. I have been studying this format for four to five years.
Playing Test cricket for one's country is the ultimate, but people are enjoying Twenty20 format because everything will be over within three hours.
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.
I enjoy playing each and every format, but for me, Test cricket is at the paramount level because I feel everything is tested at that level.
Personally, I know the lifestyle I lead is really busy. If I want to watch an entire series of something, it usually has to be in one weekend. I'll dedicate two days to it because it's not the kind of thing I can come back to, every night. I think this is a really smart format.
From a spectator point of view, Test cricket is not important; people hardly watch Test cricket. But as a player, Tests are the real thing. You have to concentrate for five days. It's a lot of time, and not easy to do it day in and day out. If people have played 70-100 Tests, it's a lot of cricket, a lot of concentration and dedication.
Village cricket spread fast through the land. In those days before it became scientific, cricket was the best game in the world to watch, with its rapid sequence of amusing incidents, each ball a potential crisis!
I can say is usually people are slightly confused. They think that silent movies are old. But, the fact is, they are old because they have been made in the '20s. That's the thing that makes them old. Not the format. The format is just a format. It's not an old format.
Cricket has a stigma of old men in white clothes playing cricket but readdressing that image to people who aren't necessarily cricket lovers may go some way to making it cooler.
I am very emotional. It took me many years to recover from the death of my father. Even when I was playing cricket, I wasn't happy. I would just sit and cry. I was very young. He was too young; he shouldn't have gone. Cricket is all right. We all play sport. Good and bad days come.