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You need to protect the best players in the country. When there is so much cricket, we must work on ways to prolong their careers.

If someone thinks, 'I'll spend the off season working on my fitness and I'll come back a better cricketer,' I don't think that's enough. You need to spend a lot of time working on your skills and honing your skills.

I want to improve cricket at the district level because lot of hardworking players come from districts. We have produced so many great players, but now we don't have players in the Indian team. My intention is to work hard for the game of cricket.

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.

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.

Cricketers have to perform in front of millions, and there are no retakes. If then you become a hero, you deserve all the accolades coming your way.

Still, I believe it is only a passing phase and cricket will one day produce an abundance of great players.

In a cricket career, your life is in some ways controlled for you. You have no control over schedules, you have no control about where you want to play, you don't have control over that as a cricketer.

For its health, cricket needs to look outward to the sharpest minds, to people who sustain and nurture brands and often take hard but necessary decisions. Cricket cannot be bound by cricketing minds alone.