Mahendra Singh Dhoni

Winning the World Cup was very special because it meant so much to so many. One thing about our country that is constant is cricket. The smile it brought to people's faces was the thing I shall always remember. It reminded me, reminded all of us, of our importance to the lives of the Indian people less lucky than we are.

Cricketers have a very short shelf life. On an average, you make money through cricket for five years, but you need to survive for sixty years.

You may earn whatever money you earn as a cricketer, but you want to play for your country. At the end of the day, you want to do something special. There are plenty of people who earn 50 crores or 100 crores as businessmen or big professionals or who are really doing well in business. But what gives pleasure to your mom and dad is the fame.

Movies are a big part of our Indian culture.

Since 2005, I have not spent much time with my family. In fact I have spent more time at the Taj Landsend in Mumbai. It was my 100th visit recently, which means I have spent more than 400 days in that hotel, and that is a lot more than I have spent with my family.

Self-confidence has always been one of my good qualities. I am always very confident. It is in my nature to be confident, to be aggressive. And it applies in my batting as well as wicketkeeping.

Gut feeling is all about the experiences that you have had in your life. It is about being in difficult scenarios, knowing what worked, what did not work, and then taking a decision.

If you are good at studies, and you want to play cricket, you may work harder than any other person, but you may not achieve it. So it's something you have to balance in life and be practical where you are good and then channelise your efforts in the right direction to be successful in life.

After one Olympics, if we invest in sports and say we will get a gold medal in the next Olympic, it doesn't work like that in sports. How it works is that you provide the infrastructure, provide education about nutrition and health.