And what did he say before he saw your bowling?

He asked me to bowl straight away. Just as I was about to bowl he said, ‘you don’t bowl outswingers much, you only bowl the inswinger.’ I said ,‘yes, how do you know?’ He said it all comes with experience. But there’s one thing that I want to clarify and that is that people and the media have taken all this completely out of context. Wherever I go, people ask if I have been coached by Wasim Akram. To coach someone and to give them tips are two completely different things. Wasim Akram is definitely not my coach, but I will always be grateful to him for giving me some useful tips. And not just tips, more importantly, the fact that at our very first meeting, he was so good to me. He gave me a lot of confidence.

Some time back you went through a bit of a crisis. You didn’t get wickets sometimes, in India, in Pakistan. Even we at our age, when we go through a bad phase, it’s very difficult to handle. How do you handle it?

I try to handle it as best as I can, and thankfully until now I think I’ve done a decent job. Last year when Pakistan came to India, I was dropped for two matches. Then I came back. Then, when we went to Pakistan, in the first couple of matches, I wasn’t getting wickets. But I did my best to handle the situation. I’m still young.

... contd.