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.
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.
I always wanted to play Test cricket, but people have only seen me in first-class cricket. I was always confident that, whenever I get a chance, I would be able to do well.
My father, who has played a bit of cricket, comes to Chepauk to watch every game I play.
I don't know about Cricket but still I watch Cricket to see Sachin play..Not because I love his play, its because I want to know the reason why my country's production goes down by 5 percent when he is in batting
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 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.
It used to hurt me that people thought I didn't have the technique and the temperament to play Test cricket.
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.
My father used to play ice hockey, though not at a high level, and my mother wasn't involved in sport at all, but they were keen that we played some sort of sport. They chose tennis because they thought it was a good sport for girls to play.
I remember growing up always loving the guitar. I used to love to watch the people play on the Country Western shows on TV. My folks told me that when I was just a toddler, I used to pretend I was playing a guitar on a toothpick.
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.
When you play good competitive cricket and win matches for your team, you always feel happy.
Unfortunately, I used to play in goal, and I broke my hand. Two fingers. The ball hit me and bent my fingers back. I used to play every Sunday. I was quite competitive.
My parents were proud of the fact that I was playing cricket, they used to ferry me around during the weekends to play the game.
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.