Honour Board

I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

I don’t fear the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks. I fear the man who practiced one kick 10,000 times.

To me, it doesn’t matter how good you are. Sport is all about playing and competing. Whatever you do in Cricket and in sport, enjoy it, be positive and try to win.

I bowl my best when I am fittest and the best way to get fit is to bowl. That’s how you get your rhythm. You cannot really find a rhythm by bowling in the nets.

I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t Quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.

The great thing in hitting is, not to be half-hearted about it; but when you make up your mind to hit, to do it as if the whole match depended upon that particular stroke.

It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about the game you’ve been playing all your life.

One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team.

Cricket, however, has more in it than mere efficiency. There is something called the spirit of cricket, which cannot be defined.

Test cricket is bloody hard work, especially when you’ve got Sachin batting with what looks like a three-metre-wide bat.

Cricket is a most precarious profession; it is called a team game but, in fact, no one is so lonely as a batsman facing a bowler supported by ten fieldsmen and observed by two umpires to ensure that his error does not go unpunished.

Every cricketer knows that in the early stages of a batsman’s innings i.e. before he gets his eye in — luck plays an important part.

I hate losing and cricket being my first love, once I enter the ground it’s a different zone altogether and that hunger for winning is always there.

My approach to cricket has been reasonably simple: it was about giving everything to the team, it was about playing with dignity and it was about upholding the spirit of the game. I hope I have done some of that. I have failed at times, but I have never stopped trying.

I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.

Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game.

You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.