Quotes About Cricket

I wasn't the most prodigiously talented cricketer in Karnataka, let alone India. Some of my team-mates in my school team could hit the ball cleaner than I do. I had to work through that lack of talent, so to speak, that lack of natural flair. Runs never came easy for me.

To have healthy competitions among players for places in the team is good for Indian cricket and the game in general.

The highest-ranked team in the world has the responsibility to ensure that the integrity of the game is upheld every single time they play. And that the spirit of cricket is with them every time they enter the field.

I don't really focus on these things - on what tags are given to me or what people think of me off the field - stuff like that. My main focus is always to do well on the field for the Indian cricket team. When people say good things about me off the field, I am more than happy to accept them.

For Pakistan cricket to stay relevant and strong, the best players have to be available all the time - it's a challenge faced by everyone, but one that particularly relates to us because of our mainly amateur, pretty random, and certainly too thinly spread domestic structure that feeds the national team.

People might think I am hypocritical because clearly my batting gave me an opportunity, certainly in the one-day team. I still always placed most importance on my wicketkeeping.

A lot of things have changed since I made my debut in 2004. The way cricket is played has changed. The kind of players that are coming in the Indian team are drastically different than what we were used to. My role is quite the same. You only evolve with time, and that's what I am trying to do.

I played my first game of adult cricket at about eight or nine when the fifth team were short and picked me to field and bat at No 11. From then I just got the bug and wanted to play as often as possible.

When you're playing against a team like India you're always going to struggle, especially as they bat all the way down the order to No. 9 and 10.

I played cricket for the Delhi under-15 and 19 team. I was inspired by Imran Khan.

I have some goals I'm looking to achieve, and one thing is to help the team win and move back up the ladder. This is vitally important to the team overall and to the supporters of West Indies cricket.

Yuzvendra Chahal, India's leg-spinner, is another IPL teammate. He's also a great guy and very funny.

A perfect smile is too often missing from the faces of the world. If cricket can provide more smiles, it is doing its job.

Cricket has so many meanings to so many Australians. It's become precisely that - an Australian way of life. And what a life it is. Some would even go as far as to say, 'marvellous'.

A cricketer's life is a life of splendid freedom, healthy effort, endless variety, and delightful good fellowship.

My life, between 22 yards for 24 years... It's hard to imagine that this is coming to an end.

I was practising with wet rubber balls just to get my reaction right, my hand-eye co-ordination right. Because sometimes wickets are softer, two-paced wickets, it helps to practise with a tennis ball.

I don't mind which wicket you play on - wet, dry, slow, or fast. I just want to play cricket.

The first time I carried drinks was during the 2004 Champions Trophy. It was a wet outfield and I was running with the drinks and I couldn't stop myself and just went sliding into Sourav Ganguly, who was giving a team chat in the huddle.

In cricket, my superhero is Sachin Tendulkar. He has always been my hero and will continue to remain so. Apart from him and outside cricket, my mother has remained my inspiration. Whatever difficult time I had faced, she was always there for me. She has given me all the strength. She maintained her composure and supported me in tough times.

In red ball cricket, with the field placements, you can look around, take your time, because you have five days to play, whereas in limited overs cricket, you have limited number of balls to play and score.

In the IPL the batters have to come at you, whereas in Test cricket they can sit on you for a full session if they want and if the pitch is dead there is nothing you can do about it.

The batsman does not always need to create big hits. He can hit a boundary, then pick up some singles and still gets nine runs. To avoid that, I need to plan in a way where he must look to hit wherever there is a fielder. That is what is called 'bowling to the field.'

In T20, you don't have time to get distracted - it's so quick, you have to run around in the field, and while batting, you don't actually think about anything else.