• A change has come in cricket, which is people like you who come from the grassroots, the real India, not necessarily from public schools... ever since you people have arrived, Indian cricket has become more competitive, more combative, you fight till the last ball.

When I started playing for India for the first time in 1999, I think Jadeja (Ajay) was the captain. And the team was not that good, nobody had that spirit. But now the young blood have joined—Yuvraj, Harbhajan, Zaheer, Ashish, myself... a mixture of seniors and juniors and the newcomers.

• There is a new combativeness, which was earlier seen in the Pakistan team. We used to say jokingly that India should play like Pakistan.

Yes, today we have Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Sreesanth, Irfan Pathan, and Suresh Raina. So there is a very good combination of young players. If you leave aside Dravid, almost all of them are in the age group of 20-30. Besides everyone has a passion towards cricket, a dedication that we have to win all the matches. Every player, they want to finish the match. Especially Dhoni, he wants to finish the match with a six.

• Sunil Gavaskar used to say that there is a problem in Indian cricket or you can call it a weakness of Indian character that everyone thinks I have done 80 per cent of the job, the rest I can leave for the next guy.

I would say that it’s about time for him to change his comments. Because today, we have players who play to finish the game and are there at the crease till they finish it. You must have seen, in the last few games, Suresh Raina and Yuvraj have finished matches. Dhoni has finished a lot of matches.

... contd.