Quotes from Ravi Shastri

The boss is the captain on the cricket field. I am in charge of the coaching staff. That's put into place. My job is to oversee things and see things go all right. Who cares who's the boss? At the end of the day, you win and to hell with it, yaar.

It's going to get harder and harder to find guys who will play for ten years in all formats of the game, and whoever does it, good luck to him - he'll be a great batsman or bowler.

Sometimes in cricket nothing is automatic; when automatic fails you need some fuel.

I am a winner, man.

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.

When you are watching a cricket match, and a side is 140 for 5 and another 100 plus to get in trying conditions and when you get that without losing a wicket, not only is that entertainment, it shows all the qualities a sportsperson should have to reach the top level.

You've got to nip things that can be detrimental in the bud, even if this raises a few eyebrows or invites some opposition.

It is the cynicism that kills all the joy. I'm not that kind of a guy. I look at the glass half-full.

We are a country obsessed by records. For us, hundreds, ten thousand runs, and large haul of wickets are more important than the performance of the Indian team.

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.

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.

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.

Half the guys commenting on MS Dhoni can't even tie their shoelaces.

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.

I have been manager, director, now I am head coach, and it's the same role. Absolutely the same role.

In a tournament like the World Cup, you have got to be on top of your game every game.

The World Cup has its own space that needs to be respected.

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.

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.

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.

Don't change the channel when Rohit Sharma walks out to bat, because by the time you change it back, he'd be long gone!!

What my endeavour is to see a happy Indian team playing cricket.

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.

You can't sideline players who can take a good helping for themselves in the Power Plays.