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Cricket pays well, so a lot of people are naturally drawn towards the game. But to carve a niche in non-cricket sports is not easy. So state governments need to be proactive. Indians need to be made aware of the power of an Olympic medal. It should be treated at par with an Oscars or a Nobel Prize.

I think country needs to have a sporting culture. I think if sports were taken as curriculum in school and are encouraged in right way like government of Maharashtra and Haryana have done given Marks for Sports and encouraging them with good jobs.

People need to take as much interest in other sports as they take in cricket, and that's where we come across a vicious cycle of performance, sponsorship, recognition, jobs and TV visibility. It's a typical chicken-and-egg story; each one is directly related to the other without an answer for what comes first.

Cricket, like all sport, offers glory to few and a lifetime of it to even fewer. For the investment it demands, it offers short careers that end when people in other professions are starting to flourish.

The mentality we have in India is not very sporting.

Conflict of interest and lack of transparency, though they are global features as we saw post-Iraq, almost define Indian cricket.

Indian cricketers need more exposure, and as cricket administrators, we need to beef up the domestic circuit. Only then will fresh talent come up.

My father-in-law and I always had great interest in Indian sport. At the Athens Olympics, watching the wrestling event, we started discussing the state of Indian sport - inadequate representation, lack of satisfactory results etc. We thought we should do something about it.

Apart from being celebrities, there's a huge amount of respect associated with being cricketers and a certain amount of reverence and honour associated with representing India. In people's eyes, apart from other celebrities in India, I think for sportsmen in India there's a certain amount of regard.