A few good words don't just make your day but they also give the sense of belonging and confidence to take the next big step forward.
Ravi Shastri
I am a professional, I believe in work ethics, I believe in contracts.
When you are playing a Test match, you would like to be playing with your strongest side.
Let me say this: MS Dhoni has earned the right to retire when he wants to.
I was a very determined cricketer. I treated the opening position as a challenge. Big names and tough attacks brought the best out of me.
An 'A' grade cricketer like Pujara should get a massive amount where he is not bothered whether he plays IPL or not.
I like honeymoons. The more the merrier.
Fearless means trusting your instincts and clarity of thought. Once you have made up your mind, don't be scared of what if.
You don't come to a cricket ground to draw a cricket match.
I never want to shy away from a challenge.
There's never been a weak South African or Australian team. They are fighters.
We all know the soil in western India has a reddish tinge. In cricketing parlance it means a ticket to party for the spinners at the start and end of a cricket season.
If I have done a competent job, I should be respected for my competency.
It's always the captain's team and it is the leader who calls the shots.
When you have seven to eight players performing game after game, you are on an absolute roll.
I always considered myself an allrounder.
Sometimes in cricket nothing is automatic; when automatic fails you need some fuel.
As a child I played cricket as a hobby. Once you started playing for your school, you became more ambitious. You reckoned you could play for the state. Then you started to think about the country. But it happened so quickly for me, I started playing for the school at 13, for Bombay at 17, and at 18 I was in the Indian side.
The classical art of spin bowling, how you should bowl in Test match cricket, is disappearing.
In Australia nothing comes easy. It's one of the hardest places to play.
Sometimes wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.
In my days, I played under several captains, none of whom were alike.
As far as I am concerned, I have never seen any Indian batsman perform better than Virat on Australian soil keeping Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman in mind as they have done exceptionally well.
I believe that tours should be only three Tests. With the amount of these things that is taking place, you will find that once you go for five-Test match series, 80-90% of the times the home team will win and you will see teams going straight down after the third match.
In a tournament like the World Cup, you have got to be on top of your game every game.
I focus on the present.
With Virat Kohli, what you see is what you get.
It's important to have the right mix of experience and youth.
We play every game to win and take the game forward. And if in trying to win we lose a game, tough luck.
Virat is everywhere. He is hands on, and very communicative. That's what you want in a captain.
Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni, the respect they have for each other is unbelievable, so it makes my job in the dressing room so much easier.
Once you have a good bowling attack that can take 20 wickets anywhere, then no game is an away game. Every game is a home game. It doesn't matter what the pitch is, you have the ammunition.
You know, when a fast bowler comes back after a series of five Test matches and then straightaway has to go into a one-day series with a three-day break, a T20 series with a one-day break, it is tough.
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 love coverage, bring it on, as simple as that.
Between 50 overs and 20 overs, there is a big difference, because there is 30 extra overs of fielding and six extra overs to bowl, and that can take its toll.
Half the guys commenting on MS Dhoni can't even tie their shoelaces.
Dhoni is a superstar. He is one of our greatest cricketers. When you have a career as glorious as that, you become a topic on television.
MS Dhoni is a massive influence on the team. He is a living legend in the dressing room and an ornament to the game.
It is the cynicism that kills all the joy. I'm not that kind of a guy. I look at the glass half-full.
Virat is in your face, he wants to dominate and has a work ethic like no one else. Whether it comes to discipline, training, sacrifice or self-denial, it is unbelievable.
As long as we know the job we are doing and we are honest to our jobs, as long as support staff we are helping players channelise their energies in the right direction, we are not worried about what critics say.
The job satisfaction that an opener gets no other batsman gets.
A coach's role, effectively speaking, is to stay in the background and let the onus be on the players.
The World Cup has its own space that needs to be respected.
As an opener, your mindset has to be different. When you need to open in Tests, you might get out in the first 10 balls.
I have been manager, director, now I am head coach, and it's the same role. Absolutely the same role.
Responsibility and accountability has to be taken by the top order.
We have to do what's best for the team, as simple as that.
You can't sideline players who can take a good helping for themselves in the Power Plays.
