'We became more mortal than in the past'

The former Australia coach looks back at his trying tenure when Australian cricket lost big names, dealt with controversy, and coped with becoming one of the rest

The years 2007-2011 will not be regarded with much fondness by followers of Australian cricket, for they witnessed the crumbling of an empire. In the middle of the difficult transition was the coach Tim Nielsen, who replaced John Buchanan after the 2007 World Cup victory, then chose not to re-apply when the job was reconfigured by the Argus review. In the first instalment of a two-part interview, Nielsen spoke to ESPNcricinfo about his early days in the role, the acrimonious 2007-08 summer, the sad case of Andrew Symonds, and Australia's struggles to find a spin bowler following the retirement of Shane Warne.

When you became coach it was very much as a players' man. It has been said that under John Buchanan a lot of members of the team were more comfortable talking to you as the assistant than to the head coach?
Because you're just the assistant coach you have all day every day to deal with the players. That's your total focus. Whereas when you do become the head coach there are so many other things. As an assistant you're not seen as a decision-maker, so they can open up a little more, to get to the bottom of what you're doing with their technical or cricket work, sometimes you find out about personal issues or how they're feeling about their own game, or if they've lost a bit of confidence and are probably more willing to talk to someone who isn't a huge influence on decision-making.

I always find it is amazing what comes out of a player's mouth when he puts a pair of pads on. Get them into their own environment in the nets where they feel comfortable and the outside world can't get in. That, for me, was often the best time to talk to them about how they're going and how is their family. Some of the things talked about in the nets have nothing to do with cricket whatsoever. It is a bit of a fishbowl - if you're doing well everyone wants to know why and get a piece of you. If you're doing poorly everyone thinks you shouldn't be playing. When I moved to be the head coach, I had to trust that my assistant coaches would do the same job for me as I did for Buck. We always wanted to make sure the messages were consistent.

In the months after you took over, you and others around the team were adamant that this successful team, which was losing so many great players, could actually get better. Was that the right attitude to take?
I'm 100% certain it was the right mindset to have. I don't think it mattered what we said publicly. There was always going to be a perception that at some stage we were going to get knocked over, and at different times we played some really good cricket without winning games, and people were really critical even though we hadn't played too badly. That was just the nature of looking after a team and coming into a leadership role with one that had been so successful. Success had become the norm for Australian cricket.

On the day I took the job I said we may not win as many games as comfortably or as quickly, but I hope we can maintain our competitiveness over time and win our fair share and be playing cricket the crowd want to come to see. Even at times we lost, like in 2009 in England, we played good cricket across the whole series. We also knew Adam Gilchrist wasn't going to play forever, Matthew Hayden wasn't going to play forever… Ricky Ponting can't play forever now, and the team is always going to be evolving and there's going to be change.

I'm proud that while we lost so many good players, we never really were at a stage when we were a whipping boy. We didn't win every game and we lost a couple of series by a hair's breadth. We won a series of some sort in every country in the world while I was there.

Your first season as coach was the acrimonious 2007-08 summer when India toured and the SCG Test bubbled over, accompanied by the Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds case. How difficult was that?
It was a very sharp learning curve, that's for sure. You can go back a step too because we lost the first game I coached, against Zimbabwe in the World Twenty20 in South Africa - which changed the whole landscape of cricket as well, when India won it. The Sydney Test wasn't actually too bad. That Test match we won, but the most unsettling thing and the biggest challenge was actually Perth, when they'd done the Symonds and Harbhajan case in Sydney but awaiting the appeal in Adelaide. There were all sorts of dramas going on behind the scenes at the administration and board level. That's when it became quite difficult for the team, because there certainly wasn't 100% focus on what we were doing as a cricket team.

It is easy to support either side, but inside the team it was very obvious they were standing up for their mate Andrew Symonds. He was part of their team, and as you saw publicly, they went to war with him in Adelaide basically. At the same time it did take the focus away from our team as far as the cricket on the ground. We ended up losing the one-day series as well, and I think that was the hangover from the Andrew Symonds thing. At the time you're doing it and you think, "We can cope with this, we can deal with it." We spoke about it as regularly as we thought we needed to, but I think the hangover of all those things, the stress and the pressure of it all… by the end of the one-day series we were pretty cooked. Both the Harbhajan/Symonds incident and losing at home in a one-day series, tended to give you a pretty hard shell pretty quickly.

It has been said the Australian team felt unsure of itself for a long time after the SCG match, in terms of what sort of level of aggression was permissible.
The biggest difference was that anytime anything happened it was written up as an absolute drama, in the media especially. What was difficult to cop was that things that would never have been an issue in the past all of a sudden became major dramas as far as the behaviour of the Australian cricket team was concerned. That certainly created a bit of doubt among the players, and it's probably not the Australian way to be second-guessing competing. That's the point it got to in the end - we were very conscious of any action we took and how it was going to be perceived off the ground, so it probably took away that 100% commitment to competing.

In the past when you walked across the white line, whatever was said on the ground was left there. And that changed a little bit - there was no white line to cross to leave it out there, and because of that there was some doubt created among the players. Rightly or wrongly, whatever decisions were made [about Symonds] caused angst among the players as well, so those were all the things we were dealing with.

"Everybody yells and screams about the selectors having to pick spinners. Well, I'd like the states to start picking some spinners as well and sticking with them"

That was seen most pointedly with Symonds himself.
It was the beginning of the end for Andrew Symonds, when you look back. Such a fine player, he was only 15-16 Test matches into his career. He made a tremendous hundred in that Sydney Test match, when he was given not out early, and it would never have been an issue in the past. He always waited for the umpire to give him out or not out. This time, because of the dramas afterwards, all of a sudden he was being called different things. All those things created extra doubt, which was hard, and when you've got such hard competitors, such hard-nosed people as the guys we're talking about, they don't take it lightly to be questioned, especially their integrity being questioned. Every time something was mentioned after that, it was almost as though it was a personal slight. It wasn't about the game, because of the feeling that "Oh, they're having another go at me personally", which is bloody hard to change and bloody hard to deal with at times inside the group. We came out of it, hopefully a bit better equipped than we were at the start of it.

Is there a sense of regret about how Symonds' disillusionment really caused his international career to unravel?
One of the regrets I have is that I wasn't able to help Andrew as his coach to find a way through that period. You always hope that as a coach you provide an environment where players can deal with the issues they have and come out the other side and still be able to perform. Andrew Symonds was a hell of a player, and for the people who don't know him personally or inside the change rooms, he's a hell of a team-mate. At different times when Ponting had to worry about being the captain and dealing with that sort of stuff, Andrew was the guts of the team. He dragged Hayden along at times, he dragged Clarke along at times, he dragged these strong personalities along with him, and it was a big part of our team we lost when Roy finished up.

To every man in the side, bar none, he was a great bloke. When things changed because of what happened, no one was happy to see that happen to Roy. We all wanted him to play as much cricket as he could for Australia and be as successful as he could. The feeling was, there were external circumstances, probably outside his control, that had a huge impact. That's hard for simple old sportsmen like us to deal with.

It was a tough period but the start of the new revolution, of the need for India to be strong. They have such a money-making power in world cricket that everyone wants to be part of the system and they are critical to the survival of cricket. At some stage there was maybe going to be something that happened that pushed the balanced of power one way or the other, and that was a big point for Australian cricket.

After that summer you won in the West Indies, but then prepared meticulously to play in India and lost 2-0 over four Tests.
We were outplayed and had a couple of moments in a couple of Test matches, particularly in Bangalore in the first Test, where we could have won. I remember them almost celebrating in the change rooms next door when the game was called off, probably a bit similar to England in 2009 in hindsight, where we made the running and weren't able to close the deal. We went to Mohali - [Peter] Siddle debuted, we lost the toss, Binga [Brett Lee] struggled, coming off his own personal stuff, Sachin [Tendulkar] passed the world record for runs and they set off firecrackers, and it just felt like we were pushing uphill right from the start. Delhi was a "batathon". We fought hard well in conditions not for us really, and the last Test, in Nagpur, we were still in with a chance on the last day.

The problems you had in Nagpur with over rates really seemed to be another instance where there was confusion over what the priority should have been - winning versus Ponting avoiding a sanction for being too slow.
It was easy for people on the outside to say Ricky should have just bowled who he needed to bowl and cop the rap. But I imagine if he had bowled whoever and we hadn't won and he'd been rubbed out for a game, there would have been all sorts of outcry as well. One thing about Ponting as well is, he's got a huge respect for the history of the game. He's a huge student of the game, he understands the responsibility he carries as a captain, as does Michael Clarke now. He wasn't willing to compromise anything for the long term of the game. They were the laws, and that's how it had to be played, and because we found ourselves in a situation made by us, we had to fix it up. We would've loved to not be in that position, but I respect where Ricky's at and what he was doing to make sure we didn't take the mickey out of the game. You play as hard as you can within the parameters that are set, and if you're outside the rules, then the consequence was we weren't able to do exactly as we wanted to.

In the past, because we'd scored runs quickly or had Shane Warne to rely on to take wickets quickly, we'd been able to get ourselves out of trouble in those situations, and maybe it had come home to roost a bit. It was a pretty hard lesson and we were all given a fair whack because of it.

"I'm proud that while we lost so many good players we never really were at a stage when we were a whipping boy" © Getty Images

Another hard lesson was that the teams of the past could afford to have a bad session or two and still win Test matches with time to spare, but you no longer had that luxury.
I think it is underselling the people in the past. The reason they were so great is that Test cricket goes for five days, 15 sessions - bloody hard work. The reason McGrath, Warne, Hayden, Langer and all these guys were so good was that over five days they were able to make sure if they didn't impact now, they'd impact soon, and kept at it. That's experience, quality, and why we need to be patient with our team now. There will be times when it feels like they've gone missing a bit, but it's just how young players learn how to keep dealing with the high stress for five days. We became more mortal than we had been in the past, when, if they looked like they were dead and buried, they were able to come back just by keeping doing it and wearing down the opposition. No doubt there was a depth of talent that was exceptional.

In 2008 we saw the start of uncertainty over spin bowling, as Beau Casson, Bryce McGain, Cameron White, Jason Krejza and Nathan Hauritz were all tried after Stuart MacGill retired. Did the selectors and management do all they could to settle a spinner into the role?
It is easy to say no, because no one has been able to grab the opportunity and be the standout spinner we were hoping for. I just wonder whether we ever clearly understood what role we wanted the spinner to actually play. We came off the Warne era and the MacGill era. MacGill retired in the West Indies in '08, which was why Beau came in to debut. What really was the issue was, we counted on MacGill to play through until the end of 2009, and when that changed, it put us under a bit of pressure from a spin-bowling stocks point of view. We had young blokes who weren't quite ready and maybe thrown in the deep end a bit early. At different times there were decisions made [on the basis of thinking that] it might actually hurt them more to keep going rather than just yank them out and let them play a bit more Shield cricket.

Hopefully we're seeing the benefit of that sort of decision with Phillip Hughes now. When the pressure was on at the start of the Ashes in 2009, where the selectors decided that it would be good to get Watson in there, [and also] give Hughes a bit of a break from this barrage so we don't scar him forever.

Everyone seemed to assume MacGill would play for a long time after Warne retired, but by that point his body was starting to give way.
MacGill isn't talked about much but he took 200 Test wickets. By then he was probably older than he needed to be to play every Test match for a couple of years. He'd played a lot of Test cricket by the time he got the opportunity to be the only spinner. He must've played about 50 Test matches, and he had chronic knees. It didn't quite work out.

What we did do after that was speculate a couple of times. That didn't quite work out either. Hauritz has been pretty good, I reckon. Because we've had a few spinners in a row, it continues to be talked about, and in the background under all that you say is SK Warne - someone we relied on and loved to have for so long, was no longer there, and it was a hard place to be as a spinner because there was this public expectation of the next Warne and our Test match victories a lot of the time happened with the quicks doing damage in the first part of the game and then Warney cleaning up in the second half. When we didn't have that sort of option there was pressure put on publicly, and I'm sure [the spinners] felt it themselves, so it wasn't that easy.

"I always find it is amazing what comes out of a player's mouth when he puts a pair of pads on, [when you] get them into their own environment, where they feel comfortable and the outside world can't get in"

Unfortunately we weren't quite able to nail it and there's no doubt we need a spinner that is an integral part of our Test team to have success. The way Australia plays its cricket and the way the surfaces are here, we need a spinner on day four and day five to have success. It is important we find one, and now Lyon has his opportunity and it is important he takes his chance and shows he can do it.

Krejza seemed harshly dealt with, in particular - dropped only one Test after he was very successful as an attacking spinner on debut.
He was… in hindsight it is easy to say exactly that. We should have stuck with him. The hard part was, he was very inexperienced, a bit like us having to pick Hauritz out of the NSW second XI. Everybody yells and screams about the [national] selectors having to pick spinners. Well, I'd like the states to start picking some spinners as well and sticking with them. While the selectors can be panned for that, it is bloody hard to go up and learn your caper at the highest level. We need to get these kids in there and give them a run and a chance to get their heads around first-class cricket and learn. Ideally by the time they get to Test match cricket, they've been up and down and through the mill a couple of times, and understand how to cope when it's not spinning a lot in Perth, or it's not going that well in Brisbane. They've learned by playing there.

What about the issues of fields, and the importance of the relationship between the captain and his spin bowler?
I can say as far as fields are concerned, I can guarantee that every spinner who played for Australia had a pretty big say in what field he had. It wasn't too often that Ponting was a dictator and said, "That's the field, you bowl". There was a lot of discussion about that, and nine times out of 10 the bowler would have got his own way.

But that adds up in terms of bowlers taking responsibility for what they want to do and how they want to go about it. They can't just rely on the captain. There has to be ownership by players at the highest level, saying, "This is my game, this is how I do it, I'm responsible for my performance".

We would've loved to have a spinner who grabbed his opportunity. We've tried a few of them. Lyon looks really good. He's got lovely shape on the ball, and I hope he can take it on as his job and grow into the next Graeme Swann in world cricket.

In part two, Ashes defeats, more Indian misadventures, and Nielsen's views on Greg Chappell, Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke

Read part two of the interview here

Daniel Brettig is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo

Feeds: Daniel Brettig © ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

View the original article here

'Fast bowling is about imposing yourself on the batsman'

Getting swing while bowling fast - Waqar Younis knew how to do that. He talks us through the art and science of it

Is swing bowling an art in decline?
I do not think it is dying, because there are a lot of bowlers who can swing and know how to master it. The art that is in decline is pace, especially in the subcontinent. We do not really find fast bowlers who can bowl consistently at a rapid pace. Young bowlers come into cricket bowling at 140-145kph before fading away in a year or two. Irfan Pathan, Ishant Sharma are two good examples. Pakistan may be an exception because their youngsters follow fast bowling much more closely. Fazal Mahmood, Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, myself are heroes to many youngsters. In India it is the batsmen that a youngster normally idolises.

With the bowlers - they enter with an aggressive mindset but over the years the pace goes down.

What are the requirements for a good swing bowler?
You need a combination of a good action, timing, rhythm and energy. Swing bowling is not at all about slowing down or increasing the pace. And it is not only about the seam position and the roll of the wrists.

The very basic of swing bowling is your action. You need to have a really good action. It does not really matter whether you are side-on or front-on. If the timing of the release of the ball is perfect, then it will swing, regardless of the playing conditions. I hear TV commentators saying the seam position was good, so why did it not swing? That is because there was something amiss in the release or in the action. The wrist position is important when you talk about swing bowling.

What is the appropriate wrist position?
The fingers should be right behind the ball. When the ball comes out of the hand, the seam should be upright. For that your wrist needs to be straight at the point of release. If it is not straight, it will stop swinging. You might be able to bowl quick but it will be up and down.

Can you give an example?
Pakistan fast bowler Wahab Riaz is a good example of a bad wrist position. His wrist breaks at the time of delivery. He is a good case of other things not being in order, due to which his wrist breaks. At the crease he is not balanced and then he has to push the ball really hard. Then his head falls and the wrist breaks. Your body position at the crease while you are delivering the ball needs to be correct.

Do you lose control of swing if you are trying for pace?
I do not agree at all. That is a wrong idea completely. Look at Dale Steyn. He bowls at 150kph-plus and he swings it big. Big bananas come out of his hand. His wrist is in such a beautiful position when the ball comes out, and all his energy is going through the crease nicely. That last part is due to his fitness.

Fast bowling is not an easy art. You need to have a brain, you need to be smart to understand what bowling is all about.

I can give you my own example when I first started playing for Pakistan. I was lucky that I had other senior fast bowlers who were really doing well, and I had a bit of competition with them. I also had Imran Khan use me nicely. He understood me better than myself. I did not have any idea what fast bowling was. All I knew was to bowl fast. It is important to have someone who can guide the youngster and tell him it will come. But it takes a lot of time to master the art.

Can you revisit those days of Waqar Younis, the young fast bowler, and how Imran shaped you?
Sometimes it is good not to know too many things. When you see a fast bowler trying too many things, it is not good for his future. I was lucky that I knew only one thing, to bowl fast. Whenever I asked Imran what I should do, he only said, "Hold on, you don't really need to do anything. I just want you to bowl quick. That is it." That really worked for me because he wanted me to become a fast bowler, not a medium-pacer.

The first six years of my career, I was really quick. Imran would use me in the middle overs, so I could get the ball to reverse. Reverse is a touch easier than conventional swing, because the ball is in your control more than when you are bowling normal swing. He used me smartly for the three years he was there, before he quit the game in 1992. By then I knew the tricks. Later Aaqib Javed was bowling with the new ball for a few years. By the time he faded away, I was ready to deliver with the new ball. So I went through all the phases: quick bowling, reverse swing and then the new ball.

Nowadays a youngster at the age of 21 tries to do different things immediately on entering international cricket. They try to learn too many things too quickly. But I again point out the example of Steyn: he does one thing, the outswinger, and he is very successful. He keeps it simple. Batsmen are scared of him because the ball comes at 150-plus.

So in those first six to seven years, were you not a complete fast bowler?
In those first six to seven years I was in the team, but I did not know much about bowling. I learned a lot about fast bowling by asking Imran. Me and Wasim would stand at mid-off and mid-on, good positions to learn about what the bowler is trying, and we would talk to each other and quickly grasp the subtleties. For about the first five seasons I was not given the new ball. I would bowl with a new ball in the nets but not in the match. I would be the fourth bowler in the attack because Imran would only bring me on when the ball started to reverse. I would keep wondering why he passed me the ball when it was 25-30 overs old. But it worked for me and now I understand why he did what he did.

We did the same thing with Shoaib Akhtar when he broke through the ranks. It was unfortunate injuries and other stuff that sidelined him, because he was a true match-winner.

"Whenever I asked Imran what I should do, he only said, 'Hold on, you don't really need to do anything. I just want you to bowl quick. That is it'"

What is the difference between bowling with the new ball and the old ball?
It always helped me, going from the old ball to the new ball. The other way around is harder: it decreases your pace as a bowler, because with an older ball you bowl quick and tend to add an extra yard or two of effort. But when it comes to a new ball, you could sort of cut down on pace a little bit. I started bowling with the new ball around 1995. By then I knew more about what my body requires, how much rest I need, how much I can bowl. Now this is done by the coaching staff. We used to monitor ourselves on our own.

Learning in the nets is a vital part of development for every fast bowler. What was your training regimen like?
I broke down a couple of times in my career. Every bowler breaks down at least once, but I broke down after doing really well on the field. People rely on the gym more now than during our times. I am not saying that is wrong. It has done wonders in terms of strength, conditioning and looks. But do bowlers have enough gas in their tanks, especially in the subcontinent, to keep going? I fear people will continue to break down.

So the point I am driving is: focus on the basics. Bowling and running were major parts of my training. I did very little gym because nobody was there to tell me that it could have helped with my strength. I guess that helped me in a way, because my body would not have coped with going to the gym and then bowling. The kind of action I had, which was very side-on, I needed to be flexible and have an elastic body. We were jogging, running, sprinting freaks. When Imran was there, we would run five laps before we did anything. Being in the gym - it was all about looking good.

Do you agree that stamina is more important to a fast bowler than anything else to generate speed?
Stamina and endurance always help. You just need to have a heart to keep running. My bowling was my training, because I had a long run-up and I would bowl a good six to seven overs on the trot and then have a break of 30-40 minutes before returning for a short burst of three overs. All that without bowling a no-ball. Even Aaqib and the rest of that lot, we just ran fast. We used to tell each other: we are not bowling a no-ball, even in the nets. We are going to bowl within our limits and then try and trouble the batsman. Even now as a coach I tell the guys never to bowl a no-ball in the nets. It puts all your energy and effort to waste otherwise.

Are fast bowlers more protected now?
Biomechanists probably would disagree with me, but based on my experience, most fast bowlers in the 1980s and '90s never had people telling us to change or modify our actions, and that if we did not do it we would break our backs. Your body is your best judge. It learns over a period of time to adapt. These days Level 3 and 4 coaches put a lot of emphasis on certain specifics due to the numerous video cameras that have come into play. But I have always believed in allowing the bowler to play with his body and understand the best position and action for himself.

Take the case of Ishant. When he first came on the scene, I thought: here is a good bowler with an open-chested action, tall and hits the deck and gets bounce. Then he started making changes in his action, going wider, started losing pace and rhythm. He is looking better now, but in the last two years he had lost it. I do not know whether it was the coaches who tried fiddling with him or whether it was his own decision.

What was he doing wrong?
He did not get wickets because he was bowling a little short of length. He reminds me of Javagal Srinath, who bowled a similar length throughout his career. With his body and the momentum he generated through his run-up, Srinath should have taken a lot of wickets, but he did not pitch the ball up. Venkatesh Prasad, with limited ability, pitched it up and did well.

Bowling is all about bringing the batsman forward: you have to make him come at least halfway in front, keep him guessing. Unless you are playing on fast pitches, like Perth of the past, there is no point pitching back of a length. Young fast bowlers in the subcontinent predominantly play on flat pitches at home, so you have to adapt first at home and be more consistent. Yes, the pitches are flat, they are slow, but you have to learn. We learned it too.

Why are Australia so good? Why were England so good against Australia and India in the last few years? They pitched the ball up. Look at the best bowlers, like Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock or anyone else - they would pitch the ball up. You have to bring the nicks into play. You cannot give the batsman time to go back and play once the ball has pitched. You have to attack the stumps. You have got to make the batsman play. Especially with the new ball. You cannot allow the batsman to settle early on. You have to pitch it in his areas of discomfort. Once he settles, he will be comfortable in any area you pitch.

How did you learn to unsettle the batsman?
Over the years what I learned came through my own experience. I got hit [for runs] myself, but I learned through that. The more you get hit, the more you learn. Take a look at my overall strike rate or runs per over - it was higher than most of the bowlers. Around that time, if there was a bowling coach it could have been different. We were just told "Aage phainkon, dande udaaon [Pitch it up, send the stumps flying]."

I rarely relied on the slips. My main aim was to target those stumps. If you aim six balls in an over, at least once the batsman might miss. Yes, he might also hit you for fours, but if I pitch 12, 14, 18, 20 deliveries continuously on the off stump, the batsman is bound to miss at least once. It will get me that one wicket.

Reverse swing taught me a lot. You need to pitch it fuller to reverse, so you adjust your lengths. Fast bowling is all about belief also: if I do this, this might happen. You need to impose yourself on a batsman with your own belief.

You said that reverse swing came naturally to you. Can you explain?
Nobody really taught me reverse swing. When I saw others doing it in international cricket, when I saw Wasim doing it, Imran Khan doing it, I felt it was easy. Honestly, I did not know how I did that. I played very few domestic matches before breaking into the Pakistan team.

"Me and Wasim would stand at mid-off and mid-on, good positions to learn about what the bowler is trying, and we would talk to each other and quickly grasp the subtleties" © Getty Images

I played in an Under-19 Test match against India and bowled quick but sprayed it all around. I was dropped. I went back to domestic cricket and played for Union Bank of Lahore against Pakistan National Shipping Corporation on a green top. The ball started swinging and I did not know how it was happening. It was conventional swing. I got six wickets. I was picked for the final Test against the Indian Under-19s again, which included Ajay Jadeja, Nayan Mongia, Jatin Paranjape. I picked up five wickets.

Later on, Imran polished my reverse-swing skills. The big part of his coaching was that he never interfered much during the matches. If I told him "Outswing is happening", he would only say, "Okay, bowl outswing." He would never tell me where to bowl from, what to bowl. I did go against his suggestions at times, but he never felt bad, because he knew I was learning. He understood that the youngster is going against my views, but if he feels that he can do it, then it is good. That really helped me.

An essential part of reverse swing is maintaining the condition of the ball. Can you describe your method?
I knew how to take care of the ball. You make sure you do not put too much sweat on it. You have to keep the right balance between keeping one side shining and the other side very dry.

Everyone does reverse swing these days. But during my day it was a controversial issue, with allegations of tampering flying around. Reverse swing is an art. And I still honestly believe that art has not been explored. Very few have managed it: Darren Gough, Lasith Malinga and probably myself. You need a certain kind of bowling action to execute reverse swing. Of course, Wasim was an exception. He was lethal because he was a left-armer. With a very high action, reverse swing is not as effective. Brett Lee did it too, but if you have a side-on action, reverse becomes more effective. And remember this: it is not swinging the ball, it is about dipping the ball. And when you have a side-on action, the ball dips more.

Also, you do not need to have the seam upright, as is the case in conventional swing. The seam should be slightly tilted. So, say, you have the seam tilted towards first slip, with the shiny side on your right, and you are bowling a (reverse) inswinger. The ball will move towards the first slip, but around the 20th yard it will dip. That is when the batsman could take his eye off the ball. It works well with a side-on-action bowler mostly. With a high-arm action, the batsman can judge it at a good distance once the ball has been released, as to which way the shine is.

How does Malinga keep coming up with those reverse-swinging yorkers? You can't even block them at times. That is because at a certain point, as the delivery is coming towards him, the batsman takes his eyes off it. I know this only because it happened when I was bowling, and I was hitting the stumps more than anyone else, just like Malinga does now. About a metre and a half from the batting crease, the ball starts dipping. The batsman thinks it is in his batting area and takes his eyes off. Some batsmen are good and look at the ball till the very last instant. But at least 80% plant their foot to kill the swing. They get lbw or get bowled by a yorker.

According to Allan Donald, ball-tampering should be made legal. What is your opinion?
What is tampering? Let me ask that question first to all the pundits. Is applying Vaseline or creams on the ball tampering? Is scratching the ball tampering? Is picking the seam tampering? All these are ways of tampering, because according to the law, you are changing the condition of the ball. Even in the 1970s and '80s, famous fast bowlers would use their nails to pick the seam. But now everybody is able to get reverse swing, so nobody is worried. You have so many cameras in the game now, but nobody is worried. Why was it only in the 1990s, when we got the ball to reverse, that people questioned us? Because we were too good. I bet there is still some sort of tampering going on: people using mints, nails etc. Now there is a law stating fielders in the inner circle have to throw directly and not hit the surface before it reaches the wicketkeeper. But what about the outfielder with a weak arm? People will always find ways. So I am not sure if making tampering legal is a solution, because it only will make things ugly. Batsmen will obviously cry foul.

Are you saying reverse swing cannot be achieved without doing one of the aforementioned things?
No, you can achieve reverse swing without resorting to any of those means. A major part of getting the ball to reverse is done by the pitch, because you are landing the ball on that, and if you know which side to land it on, you will get the job done.

How do you control the swing?
Reverse swing and control come with the condition of the ball: when it is really old, it swings more, and then you have to bowl accordingly, and the energy you put in is different. So when it is reversing big, you have to aim at a different place, and when it reverses less you land differently and use the crease a lot. If the ball is 50 overs old, it will probably swing more, and if it is 30 overs old it will swing less. As for what is the earliest the ball can reverse, it depends on the pitch. If the pitch is really abrasive and devoid of grass, the ball could start reversing after 15 or 20 overs.

"Aggression is good and that is towards the batsman, but within yourself you need to be calm and sensible. I was thinking inside myself what the batsman was planning and how I needed to out-manoeuvre him"

When do you decide to bowl the yorker: at the start of the run-up, mid-stride or just before delivery?
Most things in bowling, you decide before you start running. There are very few occasions when you are mid-stride and you change your plans. Also, your plans are set based on the batsman. So by the time you take that final leap, you know what you are doing.

Mike Selvey, the former England fast bowler, wrote that you don't bowl or aim a yorker, you feel it instead.
That is a very good comment. It is not like you are aiming at a certain place. You feel it and you tell yourself you are going to do it and it is going to be there. You can ask Malinga and even he will tell you that he never aims the yorker at a particular spot. It is another thing that he bowls too many yorkers for my liking. He can be a lot more effective if he bowls the length ball more. But a yorker is a delivery that one needs to feel - you feel the energy is going to shift, the momentum is going to shift.

Is the yorker dead as an ODI weapon? Batsmen have kind of worked it out so that balls of a full length which got wickets ten years ago often get hit for fours now.
I do not agree. If you see the real fast bowlers, they are still successful at executing the yorker, and at will. Yes, the batsman is more alert and aware now, especially against reverse-swinging yorkers. Yes, you are not going to get as many wickets as we did, because during my time only the bowlers knew more about reverse swing, not the batsmen. We would cover it. Now the batsmen look at which side is shining and how the bowler is holding the ball. What that has done is forced the bowler to rethink his strategy.

The variation of the slower ball is a creation of modern cricket. Take the back-of-the-hand slower ball, which Jade Dernbach, the England fast bowler, delivers really well. I don't know how he does it because I cannot do it, especially with a good arm speed.

Does the new ICC rule about using two new balls in an ODI hurt fast bowlers?
It is already hurting bowlers, especially in the subcontinent. You should have seen the last Asia Cup. Fast bowlers are going to be finished. I am glad I am not playing, in a way. A fast bowler has to be a lot smarter now. With batsmen carrying a thick piece of wood in their hand, you should bowl away from them when they move. In our days, umpires would signal anything out of reach of the batsman as a wide. Now you have the tramlines, so you should use them cleverly. I can see a lot of fast bowlers already aiming at those lines, and that is good.

Who are your all-time best fast bowlers?
I can only talk of fast men I saw. Malcolm Marshall was extraordinary. Glenn McGrath was not really quick, but was amazingly skilful. He was a good classical seam bowler. Whenever we went to Australia, we would say he is tall, he gets bounce on the hard pitches at home, it is very hard to face him, considering the nagging lengths he bowls. Let us see if he is good enough when he tours Pakistan. He came to Pakistan twice - in 1994 and 1998 - and picked up 19 wickets on those two tours. He was smart. Mind you, I am talking of fast bowlers during my time outside of Pakistan. Otherwise Wasim Akram would be up there - such an amazing talent.

Talking about the fast men at the moment, Dale Steyn is the best in any conditions. James Anderson is good too. I would have put Zaheer Khan of two years ago in the same bracket, because he was using his experience cleverly then. He has lost a little bit of sting now. He bowls very well with the new ball, but by the time he comes back for later spells, the speed dies. It is the age, really. Injuries have caught up with him. By the time you are 34 or 35, in the morning when you wake up, your ankle, knee, back hurt. You have to really mentally gear yourself up to inspire yourself. It is not an easy job.

You once said about Akram: "He contributed to 50% of my success. We shared the burden and complemented each other."
That is a fact. What he did for me while I was playing was amazing. As I said earlier, we would stand at mid-off or mid-on and chat to each other. He had a big hand in my performances and the wickets I took. He had a lot more control with the ball in hand than I had. What I probably gained from his success is, I wanted to take more wickets than him in every game. He might say the same if you ask him. That was a healthy competition we had. He was, and is still, a great friend.

Did you guys take wickets at times by the sheer weight of reputation?
You could say that about the tailenders. When we were bowling at the top batsmen, they knew they had their reputation at stake. What really satisfies a fast bowler is when the batsman is a lot more alert and using his skills to the maximum. So when you bowl against a Lara or a Tendulkar, he knows he can't give away his wicket easily. It is a healthy competition between bat and ball.

"Look at Dale Steyn. He bowls at 150kph-plus and he swings it big. Big bananas come out of his hand" © PA Photos

But towards the end of your career, did you manage to take wickets by the sheer force of your personality? Take the seven-wicket haul against England in the ODI in 2001.
That was one hell of a tournament. Two days later I took six wickets against Australia. Both those performances came because of my experience more than personality. The conditions were very conducive to fast bowling and it was a simple matter of pitching the ball in the right place. And to do that you need a lot of bowling behind you. I did not bowl very quick. I bowled like a medium-pacer, but I swung the ball like anything. It comes with age.

Pace, skill, accuracy, aggression, courage are what make a good fast bowler. What more can you add to the list?
You need calmness also. Aggression is good and that is towards the batsman, but within yourself you need to be calm and sensible. That is one reason I was not interested in hitting batsmen. I had the pace but I never bowled successive bouncers in a row to hit or hurt someone. I was thinking inside myself what the batsman was planning and how I needed to out-manoeuvre him. You need fire in the belly but also an icy head. You can disturb the batsman with a smile by saying something that is not explicitly a sledge. You need to look into the batsman's eyes and unsettle him. Of course, it can backfire and there are batsmen who can stare back at you. Robin Smith was an exception. He would give it back to you. Then there were the Aussies. So being calm in those instances is the key. Because you then turn back and switch off and plan the next delivery. You learn with the passage of time.

Nagraj Gollapudi is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo

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'It was amazing going out there knowing you were going to win every time'

Michael Hussey on being a part of the near-invincible Australian side, coaches, team culture and more

Only two Test matches after his retirement, Michael Hussey is being mourned like few Australian batsmen in recent memory. He chose to leave the international game on top, after a career of dazzling versatility, and spoke to ESPNcricinfo about his life and times.

Not missing it?
No, not really. Especially watching India on TV, it looks like it's been really tough work for the boys over there.

I've enjoyed the time at home. I found it quite hard to make the transition out of the international scene and try to fit back into normal living, but I feel like I'm starting to get there now.

It's been nice to still play for WA as well. I haven't made any decisions about next year. I need to get some time away from it all, then clear my mind and make a decision.

Many have wondered why you kept the decision to yourself, though you knew for more or less the whole summer. Was it a case of not wanting to be persuaded otherwise?
It's a good question. I wanted to make sure myself, I wanted to see how I felt through the Australian summer. And my feelings certainly didn't change.

Partly why I didn't want to say anything to anyone was that I cherished every Test match I got to play, and I really wanted to finish the Australian summer. If I made it known earlier, perhaps they would start looking ahead earlier and not play me in my last couple of Tests. That was a small selfish part of it. I didn't want them to say, "You're going to retire, we'll blood someone else." Most of it, though, was making sure I was 100% sure about the decision.

You have mentioned struggling through your last two tours. The UAE-Sri Lanka trip, in particular, seemed a long time away without even a Test match to show for it.
I battled through that. I enjoyed the cricket. It's just the time that you're away. It's not a very good life balance, and if you're a young guy and you haven't got other responsibilities at home, then it probably wouldn't be as bad. And also if you hadn't done it for very long it wouldn't be as bad, because it's all new and exciting. But certainly after eight or ten years, it does wear you down after a while.

You're playing the Sheffield Shield for WA. What are your thoughts on the standard of the competition now?
I think it's been really good. I found it quite hard coming out of Test cricket and into the state team. It's almost like you have to get to know the boys again, get to know the opposition again, and get to know how the cricket's played. [There's also] the difference between Shield cricket and preparing for a Test match. It is a different dynamic. I found that transition difficult but I'm more comfortable the more I do it.

But the competition itself is really good, there's some good players out there.

Fewer hundreds and more results on sportier pitches?
When you came to Adelaide when I first started playing, if you didn't get 450 in the first innings, you were pretty much out of the game. Now you can make 250 and have a very competitive score. Certainly the WACA has been extremely challenging to bat on for all our guys. It is difficult to make big scores when the conditions are favourable for the bowlers, but having said that, it's still been good, hard first-class cricket.

"I didn't have many shots when I started, but I tried to learn a cut shot one winter and I just hit a million cut shots and brought that into my game"

Young players now learn all the shots in shorter formats and then find themselves trying to temper them in first-class cricket. Was it preferable for you to start out as an obdurate young opener and then spread your wings later?
Without a doubt. If you can get a good, solid defensive base behind you and if you can learn to play well off front and back foot with a solid technique and defence, then you can really improve your game. What I tried to do when I was a youngster was try to add one shot to my repertoire every winter. I didn't have many shots when I started, but I tried to learn a cut shot one winter and I just hit a million cut shots and brought that into my game.

When I went to England I was able to develop my play against spin a lot more, playing at Northampton, where the conditions were very conducive to spin bowling, so I learned to sweep and reverse sweep and things like that.

Something else you did very well always was to be busy at the crease, working the ball around, not getting caught on strike.
It comes back to how I started, really, and not having any shots, so I had to make sure that when I did get one in the gap, I ran extremely hard, because I didn't feel like I had many scoring opportunities at all. Particularly when I started opening the batting for WA, I got a lot of my runs in little dabs and pushes and deflections. I was taught from a young age that you had to run every run hard.

After that long apprenticeship, your Australia career had three distinct phases - a honeymoon, a more sobering reality, and a big finish.
It's probably what most players go through. I couldn't have dreamed of starting as well as I did. I still pinch myself, really. But you can't expect to score like that all the time. A lot of players experience that things change. You start to take on a bit more responsibility, there's more expectation you put on yourself, suddenly little things don't quite go your way. I was under no illusion that that was going to happen to me, and it did. But I knew if I stayed true to myself, kept preparing, and maybe tried to stay as loose as I possibly could, it would turn eventually, as long as the selectors showed faith in me. They did, and hopefully I was able to repay them.

How did you deal with going from being the new face to a more senior and harried batsman as the team changed around you?
I was very fortunate that I came into a great team, so to be honest it didn't really matter if I did well or didn't do well. There were so many other great players. We had guys like Warne, McGrath, Gilchrist, Ponting etc. So I could just come in and relax and play and enjoy it, and I did. It was an amazing feeling going out there knowing you were going to win a Test match every time. But obviously things change. Warne retires, McGrath retires, Langer and others retire, and it gets tougher.

On partnering Michael Clarke: "Out in the middle it might look like it's entertaining and fun and free-flowing, but we're both very insecure" © Getty Images

Although for me I can't put any more pressure on myself, I think naturally you do see yourself as more of a senior player and take on more responsibility. Other teams also start to target you a bit more. That's part of the education of international cricket. It's tough but you become a better character for going through it.

You've often said you enjoyed celebrating wins, and team-mates enjoyed the enthusiasm of your celebrations. Did you have the most fun in that sense?
Probably at the start, but that was because it was new and fresh and exciting, and there were so many great players around. When something's new and you've wanted it so badly for so long, you probably enjoy it a lot more.

Scheduling has made it a little bit tougher to really let your hair down and enjoy wins more nowadays. It's always a couple of days and then the next game starts, so, particularly at my age, you have to be a little smarter with your recovery. But certainly when I first got into the team I thought every Christmas had come at once. We'd won a Test match. I was playing on great grounds, with and against great players, and I couldn't be happier.

Was there a moment when you sensed a change in the dressing room, when that assurance about winning slipped away?
I remember the day in Sydney when Warne, McGrath and JL retired. I remember sitting there having a beer with the boys and thinking, "Right, things are going to get a lot tougher from now on." And sure enough, it has. You lose those two bowlers in particular and you can't replace them.

I imagine the change in the characters coming through the dressing room had a bearing on that also.
The thing about that team is, it didn't really change much for probably a ten-year period, so they got to know each other extremely well, like brothers. They got to trust each other very well. The environment now will get back to that, I'm sure, but it just takes time. There's been so much change and upheaval in Australian cricket over the last year or so - changing of coaches and selectors, players have come out of the team and new players have come in. So you've got to expect it will take time for trust to build up, friendships to build. If they can keep a good group of guys together, they can get back to having that feeling again.

You had three coaches with Australia, John Buchanan, Tim Nielsen and Mickey Arthur. Your thoughts on John?
I was a huge fan of John Buchanan. I felt he knew what to say to you according to your personality. He knew how to motivate the different players according to what made them tick. He understood personalities, and to me he was very positive, reinforcing and encouraging all the time. He showed a lot of faith in me, and for my personality that's what I really needed. So I think I had a wonderful relationship with him in that respect, and I thought he was a brilliant coach in that regard: he'd treat me completely differently to how he'd treat Matthew Hayden, to Shane Warne, to Ricky Ponting.

"John Buchanan almost tried to get into an argument with Warne or challenge him with things that were a little bit left-field. Shane would say, 'John, you're dribbling rubbish. I'll show you how to do it', and he'd go out there and do it. In my mind that's absolutely genius coaching"

The popular view these days seems to be to discredit Buchanan by saying that anyone at all could have coached that team.
People can argue that as much as they like. My opinion? I think it takes a great skill to bring so many personalities and egos together and [make them] want to play together as a team. I think the way John spoke to and treated and tried to motivate Shane was genius. He almost tried to get into an argument with him or challenge him with things that were a little bit left-field. So Shane would say, "John, you're dribbling rubbish. I'll show you how to do it", and he'd go out there and do it. In my mind that's absolutely genius coaching.

Nielsen went from being Buchanan's assistant and the team confidant to the head coach, and he also had to deal with the difficult period after those retirements.
Tim's great strengths were that he was very empathetic, and he always was on your side, backing you, being positive, believing in you, feeling for you in the hard times. He was like a great mate as well as a coach. The other great attribute he had was his work ethic. He would throw balls all day to every player; he wouldn't favour any player. And he just loves the game so much. He was one of the first guys I rang when I decided to retire. I wanted him to know before the world found out.

During that time you also had a significantly challenging period, arguing with Cricket Australia about getting to India for a Test series from the Champions League in 2010.
It was more a personal thing. I was really disappointed because I was desperate to get there. My understanding was that the Test tour starts when the team flies out of Australia, and they weren't allowing me to leave South Africa, where the Champions League was, until literally a couple of days before the Test. The team had already been in India for a time getting used to the conditions. So I was really disappointed I couldn't go and prepare for a Test match.

India's a tough place to play at the best of times, and if you don't have very good preparation going into it, you're not going to perform well, and I think, looking back, it was close to costing me my career. I came back into the Australian summer where I felt under enormous pressure. If I didn't start well, I could've been out of the team. I had one Shield game in Adelaide where I got 0 and 1, and in Melbourne I got a duck in the first innings and thankfully managed to get some runs in the second innings. If that had been the end, and one of the reasons why I was left out, because I wasn't able to prepare properly, I would've been pretty disappointed because I couldn't give my best to the team, but angry that it would've cost me my career.

Arthur then came in as coach during all the changes being wrought by the Argus review.
I'd had a little bit to do with Mickey when he coached Western Australia, so I knew him a little better than the other guys in the Australian team. It was a really hard time to be around the Australian team. We had new everything - selectors, coach, administration, captain, new players coming into the team. In a way, everyone became a little bit insular and just tried to make sure they were doing their own thing and worrying about their own backyard. I'm sure as things bed down more and people get more confident about their roles, hopefully the trust and the culture can grow from there. I think the team has performed particularly well, considering there's been so much change.

One of the defining things about the 18 months since then was the axis between Michael Clarke and yourself at Nos. 5 and 6.
Michael was very keen to bat at No. 5 - he's done extremely well there. They were really looking to try to develop a new No. 3, with Ricky coming towards the end, to try to have someone like Ricky at No. 4 and then have a new No. 3 who could be there for a long time. Then the only place left is for me to slide down to No. 6.

The World Twenty20 semi-final of 2010: "Every now and then, only a couple of times in your whole career, things just seem to fall into place" © Getty Images

But it's a role I quite enjoyed. One, I had some brilliant partnerships with Michael and we batted really well together, but two, I really enjoyed batting with the tail as well, looking to eke out runs and play cat and mouse with the opposition captain and stuff like that. It's a tough position to bat as well - you might come in when the ball's reversing or spinning, and you might come in for the second new ball as well.

Your successful batting relationship with Clarke intrigues, because you have played wonderfully together. Yet there is a perception that you are quite different people.
We're definitely different. We see the game totally differently. He is a lot more forward-thinking and a lot more positive than I am, I'm always quite conservative and probably a bit negative at times, whereas he's always positive-thinking and trying to make things happen. Out in the middle it might look like it's entertaining and fun and free-flowing, but we're both very insecure. There's a lot of doubts and a lot of negative talk. "I can't score a run, I don't know where it's coming from", and Pup's saying, "Just back up mate, I just want to get down the other end - I can't face this guy." So a lot of people say we looked like we're doing it easy, but it's never ever like that. We're always right on each other's hammer.

How did you feel about the transition from Ricky to Michael as captain and the results that have followed?
I think it's run as well as it possibly could, really. It's very difficult to take over from someone like Ricky, who's a champion of the Australian team - captain and player. That would have been very difficult for Pup. But he has had the courage and the boldness to be able to do it his way and done it with a lot of success. I think he's done a brilliant job in taking over the team, and picking out the things that he thinks are important and the direction he wants to take the team, and going for it.

Your own captaincy experience for Australia was brief - four ODIs, four defeats in 2006-07 - but what did you take from it?
Well, my last result as captain of Australia was actually a victory on the Ashes tour against Northampton, so I'm sticking to that one as my last captaincy stint! I'm not too worried about the results I had, because it's very difficult to come in and make a stamp as captain if you're just filling in. So I think the way I look at it is as a great honour.

If I was to be given the job over a longer period of time, I'd have loved it, if I had time to implement things I think are important, shape the team, try to motivate players to get the best out of individuals. You can't just have a three-match series and try to change a heap of things. But in saying that, I've loved playing under Ricky, he was the best captain I played under.

As a batsman you played a great variety of innings, but were there a few, like in Sydney against India in 2008, setting up victories, that brought the most satisfaction?
I enjoyed all my Test hundreds, but the ones I really enjoyed the most were the ones where I came in when we were in trouble or there was a chance to try to get the team into a position where we could win the Test match in the second innings. So that one in 2008 and the one against Pakistan [in 2010] where we managed to bowl them out for 150 or so in the last innings - they are extremely satisfying. Because you've gone out there and with a few good partnerships been able to get your team into a position to win. And when you actually go on and win, it's so rewarding.

"Scheduling has made it a little bit tougher to really enjoy wins more nowadays. It's always a couple of days and then the next game starts, so you have to be a little smarter with your recovery. But certainly when I first got into the team I thought every Christmas had come at once"

I used to get really frustrated coming in to bat in one-day cricket at, say, Nos. 6 or 7, and it seemed like every time I got a good score, we seemed to lose, because we didn't have enough at the top. I used to go back to my hotel room feeling so frustrated. It's so much better when you contribute and the team wins - you have the biggest smile when you go to bed that night.

Among your most-talked about efforts was that to get Australia into the World Twenty20 final in 2010, against Pakistan. It was probably an innings your 21-year-old self simply could not have imagined playing.
I watch footage of it now and I can't believe it happened. Every now and then, only a couple of times in your whole career, things just seem to fall into place. On that day it just happened to be my day and nothing was going to get in the way. I don't know how it happened or why it happened. Everyone over a long career can say they had one day where everything seemed to go for you.

In a way it was the culmination of your evolution from a stodgy young opening batsman without many shots to an all-purpose player who could hit any shot and do so with power.
When I came in, Cameron White was going quite well, so it was just my goal to try to give him the strike. But we needed 14 or 15 an over, then Cameron got out and I thought, "We're not going to win this game now", and it's almost like the pressure goes off. I'll just have a bit of a go and see what happens, but it's no disgrace if we don't quite get there, we've made the semi-final. Hit one and all of a sudden the confidence starts to grow. I still didn't think we were going to win the game. Even in the last over after I'd hit the first two balls for six, I still thought it was unlikely. It wasn't until we needed one run that I thought about it and all the tension came back. "We should win this now, don't stuff up, don't get out now."

The way you talk about the game, your time with the WA team now, and also your long-abandoned teaching career, all suggest there's a mentor or coach in there.
Maybe. My plan in my own mind was to give everything a go and find out what I liked. Talking to Justin Langer, he says that you almost need to find a project, something that's going to drive you and motivate you. Whether that's becoming the best commentator in the world or coach in the world or to mentor young guys. You've got to find what it is. We're not people who can sit back and cruise. We need something to keep driving us along.

Lastly, this summer we saw a lot of tears, from Clarke, Ponting and yourself. So it felt like the end of something, of a tie with the past being cut. Did it feel that way to you?
Most of my emotions were happy ones. I felt like I'd achieved 100 times more than I'd ever have been able to in the international arena. I didn't want the stress and the anguish that comes with international cricket anymore. I didn't want the time away, and so I was excited about being home a lot more and being part of my family's life. I wanted to go out in Australia because I love the Australian summer, and the Sydney Test is unbelievable to play in, and I didn't feel like I needed to do any more. I didn't have to prove myself to anyone else or to myself. It would be great to have the Ashes, but I have won an Ashes series, so I didn't feel there was much left to achieve. It was a great time to go.

Daniel Brettig is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. He tweets here

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'I don't think it's fair to call the BCCI a bully'

Board president N Srinivasan acknowledges India has an influential role to play in world cricket but rejects the perception that it controls the other boards

By virtue of being the president of the BCCI, N Srinivasan is widely considered the most powerful man in world cricket. In a rare interview, conducted before the Mumbai Test between India and England, he answers a wide range of questions about the IPL, the future of Test cricket, the BCCI's implacable opposition to the DRS, and its role in the governance of world cricket.

You've just signed a title sponsor for the IPL for almost double the previous amount. You must be happy about that?
Extremely happy, from certain points of view. Firstly, as an amount it's good. It reflects the continuing growth of the IPL, BCCI and cricket in India, and it shows the kind of faith people have, the kind of belief and the value that they derive from this. This is contrary to the speculation in some parts of the media over what the IPL is. Even if you take last year, the crowds flocked to all the games, and over a 74-game tournament. It was remarkable the kind of attention the IPL got from the public. So we are very glad, as it enables the BCCI to do more.

The IPL almost defies recessionary trends and the economic outlook in the country. Did you expect this?
The previous times, I think, the reserve price was set at Rs 23 crore [about US$ 4.23 million] and we got Rs 40 crore [$7.37 million]. Now the reserve was set at Rs 60 crore [$11.05 million] and we got higher. Even the bid for the franchise for the Hyderabad team was a very good amount, considering that the same Hyderabad was going at Rs 40 something [crore] and we got Rs 85 crore [$15.6 million].

The teams that were sold in the interim had gone for a much higher amount.
The teams that had gone in the interim had a different revenue-sharing model compared to the first eight franchises, and [Hyderabad] was on the basis of the first eight. We must compare this to the first eight, so therefore it is good.

The IPL as a brand has seen its ups and downs. The IPL chairman went out controversially, and there have been problems with the franchises. Do you think, in hindsight, that things happened in a hurry and would you have done things somewhat differently if you could?
There is a disciplinary inquiry going on against the former chairman of the IPL, so I cannot comment on him or his action. But as far as the IPL is concerned, my view is that it has shown a lot of resilience. There has been some strain but it has come through it well. You have to understand that the IPL was a new concept in India. A franchise-based tournament was new to India, although it has existed for decades in other countries. The positive is that a lot of new fans came in. Women, children, all of them became fans. The viewership grew tremendously; cricket was exciting. With every season, somehow, the attention has increased. So taking all this into account, the positives far outweigh any strains that may have come. But it's all being addressed now. The BCCI is addressing it and taking a holistic view.

As the IPL has grown, it has become a fairly viable commercial success and has given the BCCI a lot more money. But in world cricket it has created certain tensions, in terms of schedules, fixtures, in terms of the availability of players from other countries.
Players are coming because they want to play and they would like to play. I mean, it's a good tournament - a showcase tournament. We have not asked for a window in the Future Tours Programme for the IPL. I think the IPL management, the BCCI, franchise owners are aware that all the players won't be available all the time, and we've sort of settled down with that. So I don't think it is putting a strain on other boards.

There is this fear that IPL will become this all-consuming entity and everything will gravitate towards it and players will manage their careers around it. We've seen what happened with Kevin Pietersen and Chris Gayle.
It's a free world. People and players make their choices and we can't compel a person. There are a lot of things that go into it and I don't think that it is all-consuming. It holds a lot of interest for many players, but as you are aware, there are only so many players who can play in the IPL, because we have a cap on the number of players in the team. And from what I have seen, players may not be happy to sit out as we have a cap on foreign players. So squad size and the number of franchises have a limiting effect.

But there have been tensions. In England, in the West Indies, in Sri Lanka, some players have come back from the IPL a few days before a Test series. From a global point of view, because the BCCI is the most influential cricket body in the world, the question arises: should the BCCI not be thinking about world cricket?
The BCCI has to look at its cricket. There's a lot that the BCCI is doing for Indian cricket and that is what it is concentrating on. We also run a highly successful domestic tournament called the IPL. Now some adjustment here and there cannot be defined as a strain. It may be portrayed as a strain by certain sections of the media, but I don't accept that it is a strain.

Some people have suggested that there must be a sensible way out of this, that the world should recognise the importance of the IPL and there should be a window clearly demarcated in the calendar, like there is an official window for the Champions League Twenty20. What's your position on this?
The BCCI has not asked for a window. The BCCI has recognised that today you have ten Full Members, they play each other home and away once in four years. The number of ICC events has increased from ten years ago, so there's a lot of clutter. So the BCCI accepts the fact that there is no real window and that whoever is available plays.

If a window was offered by the ICC, would you take it?
You must understand that it is not ICC who can offer a window. The FTP is among ten members, so ten members decide. We did not want to impose a limitation on fellow members by saying, "Don't play now, don't play at this time, so there's a window for IPL."

There was a suggestion that the BCCI didn't want a window because they didn't want the IPL to be regulated by the ICC or its calendar to be regulated by the ICC.
No, a window in the FTP does not mean regulation by the ICC. All FTP tours are between two members. The ICC provides a match official, by agreement, so therefore the window cannot be linked to control by the ICC.

The two great things that the IPL has done is that it has distributed wealth among players. It has also promoted a lot of goodwill and camaraderie among players internationally. But at the same time it has become an aspirational thing for players. The IPL has become the benchmark for salaries. So, in a sense, does it become a disincentive for people aspiring to play Test cricket?
All of us who have watched the IPL have seen that your cricket skills must be good to do well in the IPL. The people who have done well in Test and ODI cricket are the ones doing well in T20.

I think, aspirationally, a person would like to play for India, as that is what will bring you into the limelight for a franchise to look at you in the IPL. Recognition comes from performance.

The BCCI is also putting in a lot of effort to improve our domestic structures, and there is a lot of emphasis on domestic cricket. We also have been encouraging players to play domestic cricket, saying that they can't come into the IPL unless they play a certain amount of domestic cricket, particularly the uncapped players. So unless a person plays a certain number of Ranji matches and a state association says, "Yes he has", he has no chance of playing in the IPL. So it's not like you can go to the IPL at the cost of playing longer versions of the game.

The skills required to perform in the IPL are slightly different, though. The question is, who would want to be a Rahul Dravid or VVS Laxman if you can do better financially by being Ravindra Jadeja or Yusuf Pathan?
I think the answer should be that everyone would like to be a Rahul Dravid, because for the BCCI, and for me personally, Test cricket is the cricket. Test cricket has all the skills of cricket on display. I think a gripping Test match is far more interesting than a slugfest in a T20. And a lot of people are watching it. Let's not undersell Test cricket. We have a decent crowd, tickets have seen a brisk sale in Mumbai [for the England Test].

"Most of the money for cricket is coming out of India. It is not the BCCI. It is because the Indian public watches cricket that commercial enterprises feel it is worthwhile to invest in cricket and the sponsorship comes to cricket"

We must understand that we had one product - Test cricket. Then came ODIs, and then T20. Overall cricket viewership has grown tremendously. Test cricket, with the amount of cricket being played today, I think the viewership and attendance is good. Australia are playing South Africa - from 5am you can watch it, and from 10am you can watch a match here [in India], and maybe somewhere else in the evening. So the amount of cricket available to see has also gone up.

In the Indian market, the fans seem to be gravitating towards the shorter forms.
Traditional, old Test-playing centres still get good crowds for cricket. Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, you still get good crowds. These are what I call the original, permanent Test centres, where the habit of watching Test cricket is still there.

The way the IPL is marketed, the franchisees' desperation to get crowds in - you don't see that in Test matches. You go to a ground in Nagpur - I've been to three Tests in Nagpur - and there will be 200-300 people watching an India-Australia Test. And Nagpur is where the previous BCCI president came from. Is enough being done to market and promote Test cricket?
We are taking steps to market domestic cricket. We are even televising domestic cricket, so we are taking these steps. But some amount of weightage must be given to the fact that traditional Test centres, their performance is different from the non-traditional Test centres. I can't explain why no one came to see a match in a certain stadium, but people are coming to other stadiums. With our newest stadium - take Rajkot, we are going to have matches in Rajkot, in Ranchi, and Dharamsala. They'll all be full.

But they'll be ODI matches…
Even if we play Tests there, I think we will get… We are taking cricket to newer venues.

The kind of ownership and marketing you see in IPL, you don't see for Test cricket. Who should take that ownership? Should it be the associations or the BCCI who do a marketing campaign?
You will find that in the future the BCCI will be paying more attention to this. We have taken a look at how to improve domestic cricket. How to change the scheduling of matches. In due course this will also happen.

The emphasis we are putting on our Ranji Trophy - basically, I've said that what is important for the BCCI is to have a very strong and robust Ranji. You will find that more and more importance is being given to Ranji. After every season we call all the captains and coaches of every Ranji team. We ask each of them to tell us what they feel should be done to improve. We got the ideas from the people who are participating, which is why we changed the format to three groups of nine. All of them said, "We want to play more cricket."

Every Ranji game is videographed. Umpires are being trained on the job. The NCA [National Cricket Academy] has been strengthened, we have increased the number of India A tours, we have paid a lot of attention to district cricket. We are asking for more sporting pitches for domestic games. We have increased the size of the pitch and ground committee, so that they can go take a look at these venues to get us better quality of cricket. All these are for the longer version of the game, so that is where the emphasis is. An uncapped player who has not played for India cannot play in the IPL unless he plays 60% of the Ranji Trophy games. So in more ways than one we are pushing a player to the longer version.

Australia and England have always had very set calendars for cricket. You know that a Melbourne Test will happen on December 26 and you can book it in advance. You can plan your life around that. But in India it doesn't happen that way. There is no sense of a season.
We will get that. We are starting to look at and define our prime season, and during your prime season you should be playing at home. This is something we are conscious of. This year we also encouraged our big players and stars to play domestic cricket. This is a change from the last several years.

We are going to look to our domestic season. We want to have possibly one or two visiting teams during our domestic season, starting in September, all the way up to March, and we'll see the extent to which we don't tour outside. Given the FTP that is there, we are going to see how we can adjust.

Looking at the huge imbalance in remuneration in Test cricket and IPL cricket, do you think it's worth remunerating Test cricketers as much as the IPL does, since the BCCI can now afford it?
About 30 to 40 people are on a retainer worth Rs 1 crore each, which is $200,000. Then they get an amount for every Test match that they play. Then they get a share of the media-rights income of the BCCI. Twenty-six per cent of BCCI's income is given to the players, 13% to international players, ten and a half to domestic. So today a Ranji Trophy player who would once be getting Rs 1000 ($18), is getting Rs 40,000 a day ($737), so cricket can be a profession. On the whole, a domestic player playing Ranji could earn about Rs 7-10 lakh a year ($13000-18,400), which is a good income. And as far as an international cricketer is concerned, he is earning money, as he gets his share of 13%, which is substantial.

Are you also taking steps to ensure that Indian players get all kinds of pitches?
We are asking for sporting pitches here. One reason why we've done well is that we are having a number of reciprocal tours for our A team. So our India A team is playing abroad, it is playing in Australia and the West Indies, and they come here. So they are exposed to different surfaces, different conditions and different pitches even before they come into the Indian team.

Last year what happened on the England tour was blamed on the lack of preparation. It was said there weren't enough players with long-form practice. Sachin Tendulkar skipped the West Indies tour, Virender Sehwag played the IPL and then had an operation and missed the West Indies tour and landed midway in England. In hindsight, would you say mistakes were made?
We monitor the fitness of players. Before every selection, players have to be declared fit by the physio etc. All players don't have the same levels of fitness, some are fitter and don't have niggles, some always live with niggles. But as far as the England and Australia tours are concerned, I think on both tours in the early matches there were moments when we were in the game and there were moments when it was running our way but it slipped out of our hands. In England, except Rahul, the batting did not click. But in both England and Australia, we had super-fast pitches.

The Indian fast bowlers were not good enough, which, in fact, has been a huge problem. There has been a lot of promise. Ishant Sharma looked like he would be a world-beater in Australia [in 2008]. RP Singh looked like he would be a handy bowler, Sreesanth had so much promise. And now Umesh Yadav. But where have they all gone? As the president of the board, does that bother you?
As the president of the board, it definitely bothers me when our performance is not up to the mark and when players do not perform to expectation or they are not able to maintain [form]. Having said that, we must realise that Zaheer Khan has been bowling for a long time, even in this [Mumbai] Test he did bowl well. Umesh Yadav is showing a lot of promise; he can bowl quick. Some of the others did not last long enough. They were not able to hold their places in the team. Now there's pressure from somebody else, now there's another bowler knocking on the door. So today in the absence of performance, somebody else is likely to come.

India get exposed when they go abroad.
It's not that we get exposed when we go abroad. Every country is used to its own conditions, whether it is England, South Africa, Australia… so they tend to play better in home conditions, which is what we also do. You don't see the media in those other countries really berating their players for not doing well [abroad]. One has to recognise the advantage of home conditions, and this applies across the board. So I don't think we should run down our players by saying we did not do well abroad. Other teams don't do well when they come to India. In the past we have had teams that have done well both here and abroad, when players were possibly younger.

"I've said that what is important for the BCCI is to have a very strong and robust Ranji Trophy" © K Sivaraman

Is enough being done to preserve the fast bowlers, keep them in shape and peak fitness for Test cricket?
I think so. When they are with the team, they have access to all kinds of coaches, the best physios, trainers, etc. If they have even the slightest niggle, the National Cricket Academy is now turning out to be a very good rehabilitation centre. We have a physio in the NCA, Nitin Patel, who also keeps track, and it is not as if [the bowlers] have such a big workload. Except one or two players, most of them play less cricket, excepting those who play all three versions, like an MS Dhoni. We can't say that they are having so much of Test cricket.

It is also a player's responsibility to keep himself fit. A player like Rahul Dravid has been extremely fit at all times. The BCCI is there to give every kind of support - help, advice, etc. But ultimately it is down to the players to be responsible.

A lot of talk in the last three-four years has revolved around money and how much the BCCI has made, and the success of Indian cricket has been seen in terms of money in the media. That's a perception: that the BCCI is the most powerful cricket board in the world because of the money it gets. But how do you see the BCCI's position in the cricket world?
There are other boards who earn good money from their media rights. There are other boards who make a lot of money from gate revenue. I have also come across this kind of statement - that the BCCI is earning a lot of money or the BCCI is powerful.

It is because the Indian public watches cricket that commercial enterprises feel it is worthwhile to invest in cricket and the sponsorship comes to cricket. So it is not the BCCI but the Indian public.

Secondly, what has the BCCI been doing in the last four-five years? It has, in my opinion, in a fair and just manner been addressing issues relating to Indian cricket and ensuring that we get a fair deal. For that matter, for decades since cricket was started and the ICC was first formed, until the end of the last century, the president of the MCC was always the president of the ICC and there was a veto right for England and Australia. At that time nobody said that cricket was controlled by X or by Y.

But the realities have changed. And India is clearly in a position to get its way. For example, in case of the DRS, India's position is seen as obstructionist.
Our position has been clear from the start. We don't believe the technology is good enough. When we expressed some doubts during one of the presentations, a comment was made that we should take a leap of faith. In a purely scientific situation, where technology alone governs, there is no need for an expression like that.

Have you given it a second thought? Or have you considered using only the physical evidence of where the ball pitches and leaving the ball-tracking aside? Or Hot Spot, which they claim to have improved since the England-India series?
That itself is my question. When we agreed to use it, all the member nations had requested that there must be DRS, and we know what happened during India's tour of England. Now you say that they say that has improved further. So there is an acceptance that it was not good enough then. But it was touted as being good at that point in time. Our problem is that they say it is all right, then they say it'll get better tomorrow. So we concede the fact that there was less than adequate perfection. Which is our point: if you want to use technology it must be perfect.

Secondly, you are giving [a team] two referrals, which is a limited number of referrals. If you don't have faith in the umpire - which itself is a contradiction, as in cricket the umpire's verdict is final… if a player shows dissent you fine him. But now you're saying that I have two attempts to question [the umpire's] decision. The reconciliation between that is difficult. So if you take it to the end point of it, then you have two lamp posts with coloured lights - red, yellow and green - and you don't need an umpire at all, as you refer every decision. So let an automatic reply come from there after a review and you say red or green.

Cricket was a game of two sets of 11 people, two umpires, and the umpires' decision was final and we lived with it for a long, long time. I'm not against technology but one should be cautious and we should be clear what it is that we are trying to achieve. If you say my correct decision percentage has gone up from 94 to 95.6, is that all you are looking to achieve? It is relative. But we must understand what has been the beauty of the game.

So the sum total of this is: we say, let us leave it as it is. You have taken bias out of the system, as the umpire by definition is neutral. Cricket is a game of glorious uncertainties, so why not keep it that way?

Does it bother you that there are two systems in world cricket?
No, it doesn't bother me at all because, apart from all this, there is a cost to DRS and there are only one or two people involved. It's a monopoly-area situation, which I am not going to go into here. It doesn't bother me if two other countries use DRS - they are happy, that's okay.

But your players are playing in ICC events where DRS is used.
ICC was insisting that it is an ICC event and they had the right. But in bilaterals, we say no. We are clear in our mind, but I hope slowly people will see our point of view.

Since India is the most powerful board in the world and is in a position to influence decisions, would you rather not use your power to persuade the other boards that the world have just one system?
We have not taken an obstructionist policy. We don't believe in it, so after discussion, the members have agreed it should be bilateral. I don't want to dictate to other people.

There's a perception that India is the bully at the ICC board. How do you react to it?
It's very difficult to change perceptions once they are set. I don't know if I can make an attempt now, or what I could do to change that perception. But I don't think it's fair to call the BCCI a bully.

The BCCI has the biggest voice on the ICC board. Is that a fair assumption to make? And that other boards are wary of going against the BCCI's wishes?
That is not a fact. In the ICC, all members are sovereign. The ten Full Members are sovereign.

The India tour matters a lot to every board, so what India says carries the most weight at the ICC board.
Such a simplistic conclusion cannot be drawn. There is no doubt that there is an advantage to an Indian tour, because the Indian public wants to see… in that sense, it makes your visit more desirable.

Do you think there's a case for better communication? The BCCI tends to be opaque, as the world doesn't know what goes on behind the decision-making.
I think that is not a fair comment. The BCCI is not opaque. We are quite open to discussing how we function. I think a lot of systems are in place today, we are cooperating in a very professional fashion.

But it's still very centralised. Only two or three people run the business here.
All big decisions are made by the working committee, although the public perception is that X or Y makes them. We have got very strong committee structures here to deal with every aspect of the game. Over the last several years we have paid a lot of attention to our management structures in the BCCI. So one can't say we are opaque. Maybe it's a lack of knowledge of the systems that we have that you could come to that conclusion.

Is it perhaps because there is not enough communication and not enough media management, that things are not explained properly? I'll give you two examples. For instance, nobody really knew what happened in the Sky controversy. There's a huge backlash in the UK because fans don't know what the real story is.
It was a simple issue. There was an additional cost involved in what Sky was asking for and Sky declined to pay.

But there was no proper communication from the BCCI about the issue and there was the wider question of English fans getting deprived of the best possible coverage.
The rights holders in each market should be responsible for doing what they need to do make sure they provide the best possible localisation. We believe our coverage is world-class, and if any localisation is required by Sky, they have to pay for the services, like the BBC agreed to pay. Even Star, our rights holders, incur costs for localisation in Hindi.

And then there has been the issue with the photo agencies.
Just like media rights, our TV production is a right we have sold. The still image is also our right, but we have chosen not to monetise it. Now if you are a newspaper and come with your camera, take a photograph and print it in your newspaper, I have no problems. But if you are an image agency, you are going to sell it out and monetise it. I'm saying no to that because this is my right. This policy applied to the IPL also, but there was no controversy and no one came and asked us anything.

But you were willing to allow certain agencies to take photographs. AFP, for example.
AFP is a newswire agency, as against Getty and Action Images, who are image-only agencies. AFP is selling pictures with editorial. Standalone pictures is business. Tomorrow I could have a camera around my neck and start shooting photographs and say I'm from Andheri Times. How many such people will be on the ground? We are giving images at no cost to any publication, so the coverage is not affected.

"One has to recognise the advantage of home conditions, and this applies across the board. So I don't think we should run down our players by saying we did not do well abroad. Other teams don't do well when they come to India. In the past we have had teams that have done well both here and abroad, when players were possibly younger"

I know people - Rahul Dravid, for example - who talk with great affection about your love for cricket. About how you used to watch club cricket. But does it bother you that the perception of N Srinivasan in the world outside is that of a tough administrator, tough negotiator, who is sort of slightly cold towards cricket?
I tell you, I'm a pure sportsman. I played hockey, cricket, tennis, and now I play golf. Sport has taught me to be fair, to accept victory and defeat, and from my father's days, India Cements has been… we talk of cricket teams from the mid-'50s, we are running teams and even now we are running 12 teams, we have given employment to cricketers. So we were a promoter of the sport when there was no money is the game.

Otherwise I'm very seriously involved in the production and sale of cement, which is my basic business. I read a lot, I watch sport, I walk every day, I play golf. Those who know me know me differently.

I feel for all the cricketers who have contributed to Indian cricket, which is why, if you notice, this one-time benefit is a very big thing. We have not really thumped our chests about it. During the IPL we felicitated all the cricketers. Even yesterday, looking at the CK Nayudu Awards, we were thinking about who else might have got it, so let's collect them and give them a special award.

What would you like your legacy to be in cricket? How would you like to be remembered?
Just as a fair person. One must realise that the BCCI occupies a prime position in India and in the cricketing world. Cricket is a religion in India, so it is very easy when you're in the BCCI to be tempted because of the attention you get from media, from all places. We should not look at that, but we should look at the job we have to do here. A person who is an administrator here must realise that this is a job we have to do, and we must go about our job and not be interested in the publicity that we get out of it.

Do you aspire for the BCCI or India to take the leadership of cricket as a global game?
Even now we are not only talking about India. At the same time, we must understand what it is that we expect out of the ICC. How did the ICC develop? They were running one World Cup. The question also is: what do you want the ICC to be? It's very important. These are debates that are taking place at all levels. I think the BCCI is contributing positively to the development of the game. Everyone may not agree, we may not be on the same page, but I think we are doing it sincerely.

Sambit Bal is the editor of ESPNcricinfo

Feeds: Sambit Bal © ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

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'When you've played at the top, it's hard to settle for second-best'

Rahul Dravid looks ahead to life after retirement, back at his career and captaincy, and at the changing status of Test cricket

It has been a fortnight since Rahul Dravid retired and already the world has turned upside down. First, he couldn't grab a helicopter to beat the Bangalore morning traffic to get to the interview on time. Then he couldn't take his eyes off a large glass jar of what looked like multi-coloured sweets (jelly beans? M&Ms?), grabbing a few on his way out of the coffee shop at the Leela Palace. (Ya-boo to you, skinfold tests.) And finally, this otherwise studious, decorous and meticulous man is completely relaxed about the fact that the last leg of his playing career will pan out in front of an adoring, singing, dancing IPL audience, for whom "dot ball" might as well belong to children's activity books and "well left" is a Google Maps instruction.

Just before setting out for his stint with the Rajasthan Royals, Dravid gave his first interview after retiring from international cricket, where he looked back on his career, the way ahead for the Indian team, and taking the hard road to retirement.

How does a player pick the right time to retire? How did you? What's the different between a slump and a sign that your time is up? What separates doubt from foresight?
It's actually very hard to tell if there is such a thing as a right time. All your career, you're taught to never never give up. You're fighting, you keep improving, you always think you can sort out problems. I never thought about going out on a high or going out on a slump. A lot of people told me: "You will just know, Rahul, when the time is right." Obviously there are other things that come into consideration. Where you are in your life, where the team is at that point of time, what the future challenges are, how you fit into that. Even if someone doesn't tell you, you've been around long enough to know where you stand. There are the immediate challenges of tours like Australia and England, which you think are tough, and you want to try go there and make a difference.

In the end it just comes down to knowing and being comfortable with it. And I just think, while I had been thinking about it, I was most comfortable doing it at this stage. If things had not gone well in England, maybe I would have been comfortable doing it then. Obviously after England, I felt I was in good form and that I needed to go to Australia, and I felt that it was going to be a tough tour and that it wouldn't be right to walk away after doing well in England… it may sound silly, but just wanting to finish on a high - that hadn't occurred to me, in the sense that I wanted to go when I was comfortable.

There was a period in 2008, the end of 2008, when I was really struggling and not getting runs, and there was a lot of talk of me being dropped. If I had been dropped at that stage, I would've still continued to play first-class cricket. Not in the intention of trying to make a comeback - I know that if I had got dropped at 36 or 37, the likelihood of me making a comeback would have been very slim. I wouldn't have played for wanting to make comeback, but because I still wanted to just play the game. It was a game I loved and I still loved enjoying playing it. I probably would have continued playing Ranji Trophy at that stage. And how long that would have lasted, who knows.

But to end a career with the IPL?
In some ways it's like a weaning-off period. Playing cricket has been such a big part of my life, so to just walk away might have been hard. Some of the senior guys who've retired and played the IPL say the IPL's a good way, in some ways, to slowly wean yourself off the drug that is cricket.

What do you assess when making a decision to retire?
It's a combination of things. The important thing to remember is how much are you contributing. That's a major factor. As you get older these things do come in, and that's why I said that England for me… it was important for me to keep contributing.

After actually retiring, did you ever think: what if this is a mistake?
I think the best question someone asked me about this retirement thing is Eric Simons. I called him up and said, "Eric, I'm retiring." And Eric said, "When you made that decision, Rahul, did you feel relief or did you feel disappointment?" And I had never thought about it that way. It was a feeling of relief and I did feel it. I've not regretted it.

I've lived this life for 20 years. I haven't regretted it and I hope it won't regret it, and I still can have a Twenty20 bash. I guess it's only in June, when I'll sit down and the Indian team will play another Test match again - I don't know, I might miss it. We miss a lot of things. We miss college, everyone wants to go back to Uni and live that life again, but you know that's not possible. Hopefully you move on. You will know that there are other things to do and other challenges.

What about international cricket won't you miss it, apart from the travel and being away from family?
In a cricket career your life is in some ways controlled for you. You have no control over schedules, you have no control about where you want to play, you don't have control over that as a cricketer. I think while I'll miss the routine and knowing what to strive for, I think I'll enjoy the flexibility of being able to make some choices about things I want to do. I'll enjoy the luxury of now having that choice.

What is it about life after cricket that you think a player fears the most?
Each one has his own fears, when it's something you've done all your life. And when it's the only thing that you've known, it's almost like starting out fresh again. It's almost like going back to college, like going back to what you felt like when making a decision about whether you want to do commerce or engineering. The only problem is, you are doing it at 40 rather than at 17 or 18 and with skills you've worked on for 20 years at the exclusion of other skills. You have to start all over again. That, I think, in a lot of ways can be daunting to people, and it's not easy, especially, if I may say so, because you are used to competing and playing at an extremely high level. You pride yourself on a certain level of competence and a certain level of ability.

Very rarely people can, I think, step out of something they've done for 23 years and attain the same standards in whatever they do. When you are used to playing at that top level, it's hard to accept that sometimes you have to settle for being second-best. I guess that's the way it's going to be. You can't expect a guy at 40-41 to become "world class" at something else.

"Mentally sometimes you are fresher when you are younger. You've not been worn down so much. So your response to defeat, failure, success, pressure is better. As you get older, the freshness gets lost, the sense of excitement"

What do retired players tell you about coping?
I have spoken to people who retire, and specially coaches. Whether it's been conversations with Kapil Dev or through the years with John [Wright], Greg [Chappell], Gary [Kirsten], and even Duncan [Fletcher] now. All of them have gone through that and they say it takes a bit of time to get used to. You get used to it and then there are new things to challenge you and you must move on. Each one is different, I guess.

Before you actually retired, was there a time in your career that you were so totally fed up that you actually wanted to throw it all away?
Obviously the period just after the World Cup when we lost, in 2007, was difficult. It was the first phase in my career other than the first couple of years when I was establishing myself, that I got dropped from the one-day side. Other than that I had a pretty smooth run for a long time. That was tough in terms of some of my performances, that whole period, 2007-08, getting knocked out of the World Cup and not performing so well after I gave up the captaincy for a while. I think that was a really hard period, when I questioned myself a lot and wondered whether it had all just disappeared and gone away.

I thought I'd really had a good run and I could have walked away in 2008 and felt pretty comfortable with what I had done and achieved, and I wouldn't have regretted it at all. Because I've always tried to do my best - you've always got to try to be the best you can be and hope that the results fall your way. If it hadn't worked out, it hadn't worked out. But I was lucky to get a chance to play a couple of years of cricket.

How much was working on your fitness a part of pushing yourself through the last four or five years from then on?
I spent two-three years working with Paul Chapman, who was the strength and conditioning coach at the NCA and the NCA's physios and trainers, on raising the bar of my fitness. I was lucky that we had all those people there here. I saw in those physios and trainers and in Paul, a resource, really good professional people who could help me. And I sort of decided to utilise that completely. I did make a conscious effort to try and raise the bar of my fitness, because if I wanted to keep playing at this age, I didn't want any of the younger guys or people in the field to feel that I wasn't fit enough to be there.

Sometimes performances you can or can't control, but fitness I think to a large extent you can control. I'm not saying you can control everything in fitness - there are a lot of guys who have injuries, who, whatever they do and whatever they try, sadly they can't do much about. But in most things, fitness and diet and stuff like that, you have responsibility over it.

Performance… sometimes you practise and work hard and still things don't pan out. But fitness is a lot simpler. I said, "Look, I'll make an effort to be as fit as I've been. While I did try, it was hard to say I've been at my fittest. In some areas I was fitter than I was at 24-25 and in some areas I was not. But I'd like to believe that till I finished my career, I set a pretty high standard of fitness for myself and I didn't let anybody down in terms of the effort I put in in terms of my physical fitness.

Did it have a direct impact on your game in the last few years, you think?
It's hard to co-relate the two. You do perform better when you're fit, you do feel better about yourself, but it's hard to say. Even when I was doing badly in 2007-08, I was pretty fit. Was I really fitter in England last year than I was in 2007 when I was doing badly? Really, no. Probably I was fitter back then when I was in England, so no. Sometimes fitness is a good thing to have but you have to recognise that fitness takes you only so far, and skills are the most important thing.

Fitness just helps you execute those cricketing skills for longer and more consistently maybe. If someone thinks, "I'll spend the off season working on my fitness and I'll come back a better cricketer," I don't think that's enough. You need to spend a lot of time working on your skills and honing your skills.

When cricketers go into their late 30s do they sense what the outside world observes as a fading of their skills? Slowing down of reflexes, eyesight etc?
I didn't sense it like that personally… but maybe we are trained not to sense it, who knows? Maybe sometimes these things are better judged from outside. As a player you will never admit to weakness, to a slowing down of skills. You're not trained to admit these things. You have bad patches when you are 24-25, and it's only when you have bad patches after 35-36 that people say your skills are down, the eyesight is gone. Maybe it has not, maybe it has nothing to do with age and you're just going through bad form and you happen to be 35. After 35, I felt as fit in terms of physical fitness - if you judge fitness in terms of sprinting a distance, running a distance, whatever yo-yo tests we have and weights you lift - as I was when I was playing my best cricket, at 28-29. I was probably doing more in terms of some things now than I was when I was young.

How do you judge eyesight? If you go to a doctor and ask him, he will you've still got 20-20 vision. Maybe [time] just wears you down - the travelling, the pressure, the dealing with expectations, those things slowly start chipping away, chipping away. It's hard to put a date to it and say, "Now it's started decreasing and now it has decreased."

"It's got to move on from being the team that was led by my generation, which is already happening slowly" © Getty Images

The best explanation I've heard for this is that mentally sometimes you are fresher when you are younger. You've not been worn down so much. So your response to defeat, failure, success, pressure is better. As you get older, the freshness gets lost, the sense of excitement. Like what you experience the first time you walk into Lord's. After you've been there three or four times, maybe that sense of wonder goes. That's the best explanation of why after a period of dealing with some of the same things, they become more difficult, rather than a fading of skill.

In that way Australia must have been the tour from hell? You went there with the best intentions, the best preparation, and it all went badly. What went wrong?
I think Australia was disappointing. In England I felt we had quite a few injuries and I just felt we weren't necessarily as well prepared as we were in Australia. Australia, I thought we went there with the best of intentions, the guys cared. They played better, they pitched the ball up, we had some opportunities in the first Test, we didn't grab them. We had them at some 210 for 6 and then they got 320 and we were about 220 for 2, and Sachin got out that evening and I got out next morning. Having said that, you have got to give them credit. They bowled well, pitched the ball up, they swung the ball.

From a personal point of view? All the bowleds?
It was disappointing. You set high standards for yourself. I felt that getting out is getting out and obviously constantly getting out…

So it really doesn't matter whether you were out caught, lbw, stumped, bowled, whatever?
I don't like getting out, period. How it happens is almost irrelevant. But yeah, obviously it happened a few times more than I would have liked, no doubt about it. The beauty of it is that now I don't have to worry about it.

But those are challenges you face all your life. I think that is what differentiates people who play for long periods of time from others, because they keep getting asked questions. Top bowlers and top bowling attacks keep asking you different questions. For some, it is getting out in a particular way, for some it is the ability to play spin, for some to play pace. For some it is a different bowler, a unique angle, on a different wicket. These questions keep getting asked and you have to constantly keep coming up with answers. Most of the guys that I know who have played over a period of time have constantly been able to find answers to the questions that keep getting asked. You become a problem solver, a solution finder. I'd like to believe that if I had continued, I would hopefully have worked on this area [getting bowled] and got better at it.

Much is said about body language and neither you or the Indian team was big on body language. In your experience, how much did that count in a competitor?
I feel now that now good body language is sometimes equated to being abusive or aggressive, and I think that that's not true. Each of us is different, and I think there's people who show more of their body language in a particular manner and that's what works for them, and fair enough, I'm not saying that that's wrong.

Body language can mean different things. Just because someone is not over-the-top competitive doesn't mean he's not a good competitor. Or it doesn't mean he's not in for a fight. There are external people and internal people. It doesn't mean that people who are more internal are less aggressive. They can be as aggressive.

Sometimes the toughest bowlers, I found, were always the guys who gave away nothing in terms of the way they thought - what got them angry, what got them frustrated. They were very, very hard guys, because you knew they were just focused on bowling and doing the best they could. Someone like McGrath, someone like Ambrose. When I played Ambrose, it was a great education for me. He never said a thing. I've never heard him speak; I don't know what he sounded like and I was on tour for four months. He gave you nothing. He pitched every ball on the spot, he was proud of his skill and his craft; he wanted to take wickets and he ran in with intensity.

You knew that intensity, you could sense that intensity with them. They did it throughout the day without showing you much. There were a lot of guys who would shout, stare at you, swear. But you knew they did not have the stamina or the fitness to survive till the end of the day. You could tell that they were emotionally violent but that they would fade.

Then there were people like Warne or Murali. Warne was dramatic but he was also incredibly aggressive. You knew that when he got the ball in the hand, he was going to come at you. I judge aggression on the way people perform.

The bowlers I respected or feared or rated were not the ones who gave me lip or stared at me or abused me. More the ones who, at any stage of the game, when had they had the ball in hand, they were going to be at me and they were going to have the skill and the fitness and the ability to be aggressive.

"There were times then I could have done things differently with the captaincy. Being probably a little less intense. Maybe I was so keen to do a good job that I got too caught up in it"

And that was easily picked up.
You could tell that very quickly. You can see the spell of a guy who's just raved and ranted, and after tea you can see he's just not the same bowler. He's not doing the discipline thing. The team might require him to be bowling one line and blocking up the game because there's a big partnership developing. And they are more interested in trying to be aggressive, to do their thing and trying to be the hero. It becomes about them, not about what the team is trying to do.

Coming from a country like India, with a technique attuned to playing spin, what was it like tackling Murali and Warne. What were the methods you used to face them?
No matter how much practice you have, these guys were great bowlers. They had variation, consistency, control. There were some great spinners during that time - Murali, Warne, and I was lucky to play with Anil and Harbhajan, two guys who bowled well for us. You had Saqlain, who bowled well against us in a couple of series. Daniel Vettori was extremely consistent; bowled good tight lines. So these guys were good. I like to believe we played some of the world's greatest spinners better than some of the other teams did.

One of the things is that because we had so much practice, maybe we read some of these guys better. One of the things we did better was that whenever a bad ball was bowled, we were able to punish it, and we had the guys who had that skill. There was a certain amount of pressure on the spinners bowling at us, that they had to be at their A game all the time. And when they were at their A game, they knocked us over a few times, no doubt about it. But you had to be at your A game to do well against us, and you can't be at your A game all the time.

What do you make of the general notion that struggling against fast bowling is worse than struggling against spin?
I think that sort of thing is a throwback to the days when there was no helmet, so there was a fear of injury when facing fast bowling. People were scared, and everyone would have been scared, but I guess those who showed it were considered weaker and that was not considered good to be. Also, I think subcontinent tours in the old days were not considered the No. 1 tours - people didn't necessarily value their tours to the subcontinent as much as they valued tours to England, Australia or South Africa. That has changed now and it's pretty obvious that, with the kind of audience and support that cricket generates in this part of the world, a tour to this part of the world is extremely important now.

Honestly, if you want to be a good batsman you have to prove yourself in all conditions. To say that it is okay to do badly in the subcontinent, to do badly against spin, is not acceptable anymore. It's slowly changing. When I look at the media in England, Australia, South Africa, in the past sometimes they would almost have a casual attitude to performances on subcontinent tours. They are also putting a lot more focus and emphasis on it now. When some of their players don't do well on the subcontinental tours, they get criticised and it gets pointed out and questioned, which is a good thing.

Your captaincy had some good results and at the same time many dramas. What, firstly, did you like about job?
I enjoyed the decision-making process in the middle. The actual captaincy side of things was good. I enjoyed being part of the process of trying to build a team, trying to be creative, to see how we could get the best out of players, see how we could win and compete with the resources we have. Those are sides of captaincy you enjoy.

There were some good results. In the end you have to accept that you are judged a lot by the World Cup in India, whether you like it not. Obviously that World Cup didn't go well and didn't pan out the way I had hoped it would. So I guess it clouds a lot of what happened. But I think there were some good results and there were some tough times, like with a lot of captains, but the overriding impression that tends to stay is that World Cup. I'm not here to justify anything. I recognise that I always knew that was going to happen. That's the way it is.

Was captaincy something you were actually looking forward to doing?
I was vice-captain for a long time and I was part of the process, so yes, I knew that if there was an injury or something that happened, I would be the next guy in charge. You're part of the management and decision-making process, you're contributing, you're ticking all the time, so you know you have to be ready. I also knew that me and Sourav were also of the same age and it might not happen. When it did happen, I was extremely keen and excited about trying to do a good job of it.

Did the Chappell drama weigh you down as a captain? When you look at it now, should you have done something differently? Maybe behaved out of personality and been confrontational with him? Or did you believe you and Chappell were on the same page but the environment soured very quickly?
I think when you look back at any stage of your career, there are things you could have done differently, and that captaincy period is no different. In terms of intention, of what we were trying to achieve, I have no doubt in my mind that you know it was on the right path. Sure, we made mistakes, sure, there were things that we did right, and maybe some of the results didn't show up right away, they did show up later on, but that's just the way it is.

I'll be the first one to admit - and my whole career is based on looking to improve and try to do better - that there were times then I could have done things differently, in the way that I approached it and handled it. Being probably a little less intense. Maybe it came to me that I was so keen to do a good job that I got too caught up in it. I got too tense, too anxious or too keen about it in some ways.

"Questions are going to be asked about Kohli, and how he comes up with solutions or answers is going to decide how long or how successful a career he is going to have" © Getty Images

Do you think that captains can actually lose teams and that at one point you lost the team?
Maybe it is. I don't know if you lose the team. You can lose players in your team and you have to try and fight and get them back sometimes. Or sometimes it's phases that players are themselves going through in their own careers that pushes them away from the team. In some ways so you can lose players. I don't think you can lose a team. Then there are times when you are making tough decisions about doing certain things that not everybody in the team likes. Then you need results to go your way. At a time like that, if results don't go your way then sometimes it becomes easy for people in and around the system to sometimes, I guess, pull in different directions. Eventually it does become about results. It's not all about results but results are incredibly important. And I think, specially as we've seen in India, results in big tournaments.

Why did you stand down from the captaincy after the England tour in 2007 that had gone well?
Maybe I just lost the enjoyment of the job. I got a certain joy out of captaincy, and maybe there was a period on that Engand trip where I just lost the joy of the job. I'd been playing and captaining non-stop for three years and I also had a young family. I lost a certain enjoyment, and I generally felt that the captain of India should be someone who is extremely eager and excited and wakes up every morning wanting to captain the team. Maybe in that time there were days that I didn't feel like that.

When you retired, you called your team-mates and spoke to them before making the announcement. When you quit the captaincy, you just vanished. What was that about?
When I look at it in hindsight, I could have handled it better. I didn't want to make a fuss about it at that stage, and I think a lot of people got upset with me more about how I handled it rather than the decision in itself. So you learn from that, you learn from the mistakes. Maybe I could have handled it a bit better and done it in a better way than I did.

Now that you're about to go into the IPL as one final hurrah, what is your response to the impact of Twenty20 cricket on Indian cricket?
The reality is that when I grew up, playing Test cricket was the ultimate. It mattered professionally also in terms of making a living from this game, which does become important at some point. You had to play Test cricket consistently for a long time to do that. But now you don't need to play Test cricket. The advent of Twenty 20 and the IPL has meant that it is possible to make an extremely good living from the game without having to play Test cricket. In the past you had only the cream at the top who were making a good living, but now it's spread a lot more and you have a lot more people who make a very good living. It is one of the great positives of the T20 and the IPL.

But there is obviously the danger that players might sell themselves short. If they face early stumbles or hurdles early on in their Test career or in first-class cricket, there might be a few who may choose to stick to T20 because they are better at it and they are making better money from it and they don't want to risk losing that.

India will face this challenge a lot more because a lot more Indian players play in the IPL. So how we address that challenge and go out and make people and players value Test cricket - that will come down to scheduling. We have to schedule more Test matches per year. It will come down to compensation. You've got to compensate Test cricketers adequately now. It'll come down to marketing, how you market Test cricket, glorify its history. It'll come down to coaches at junior levels, how they talk to their wards, how they inspire them about Test cricket. It'll be about stories, it'll be about media. Everyone will have to play their part.

There have been some good examples recently of people who have been good players in Twenty20 and have come out and done well in Test cricket. It's a good thing for kids to see that you can succeed in all three forms of the game. That's important. I have no doubt that a lot of the kids playing today in the one-day and Test side have grown up having Test cricketers to admire. But it's kids who are my children's age or a little older, who are now getting interested in the game for the first time and are seeing the IPL, it's those kind of children that we need to educate and talk to about Test cricket.

The responsibility lies with the ICC and the boards to schedule enough Test matches. They might have to make a few sacrifices in terms of money. I have no doubt that if you play enough Test matches, kids will want to play it. People might not come to the grounds that easily, and that's why it's important to explore other avenues - whether it is day-night cricket, or venues where we play it, and the context of Test matches. We have to accept that people don't have the time, but there is still huge interest for Test cricket. People follow Test cricket, whether it's on television or the internet, in India as much as elsewhere.

In the last few years in as much as there have been fears, the number of the articles that get written about Test cricket, the number of people who follow it passionately, who talk to me about Test cricket - that hasn't changed.

"It was important for me how the team was projected. We were going through a rough patch, we had come out of this match-fixing thing. We were always known as poor travellers. Each team has its own image; that's what you want to change"

In this Twenty20 age, how must India handle the passing of a great generation of its Test players? After 8-0, how can the transition be made smooth?
At some stage there is going to be a whole new generation of players. I know there are always links between one generation of players and the others; there is always a middle-level of management - players who have been around and are still going to be around for a few years. Two or three guys might retire in the next couple of years, whenever that is, who knows? But after that there are going to be guys who are going to be around, and the responsibility is going to lie on these guys to step it up. Guys like Sehwag, Gambhir, Harbhajan, Zaheer, Dhoni himself. Not only as players but also as spokesmen. As people who decide the culture of the team, the way the team is run, the image they want to project of the team, regarding which form of the game is important to this team. It will be a group of players, who I think are already seniors, who will set the tone for the next generation coming through.

That cycle goes on, that cycle will go on. It's got to move on from being the team that was led by my generation, which is already happening slowly and will continue to do so over the next few years. I'm not saying the seniors need to be replaced, they will be the sounding boards. But the direction and the culture of the team over the next ten years will have to be decided by this capable group of young players.

Virat Kohli is now seen as the leader of a younger generation - do you see him as your successor in the No. 3 slot?
He's got the talent - that was obvious from the time he was an Under-19 kid. He didn't have a really good [first] year at Royal Challengers Bangalore but you could see that there was talent. That's not going to change. He's got the talent to succeed at this level and it's great to see the evolution of this kid, from what we saw at 19 to what he's becoming now. His consistency of performance and his ability to play in different conditions and score runs in different conditions - that's great.

And he's got to keep doing that. As with any career and anything that you play for a long time, questions are going to be asked of him. On the technical front, on the physical front, on the mental front. On how he deals with failure, with success, with all that happens around him in Indian cricket. Questions are going to be asked about him, and how he comes up with solutions or answers is going to decide how long or how successful a career he is going to have.

Indian cricket can hope that someone like Virat, who has seemingly made that transition from a precocious talent to a performer at the international level, is able to have a long and successful career. The strength of your team is finally built around people who can have long and successful careers. You can then build a team around him and some of the other young guys.

Do you worry about where Indian cricket is at the moment - that we are going to be a very good, competitive team in ODI cricket rather than a successful Test team? Or that all of this depends on ensuring that your fast bowlers conveyor belt doesn't go around so quickly?
I wouldn't say I'm worried. I would say there are challenges that Indian cricket faces today. Some of these are challenges that have always been there in the history of our game - whether it is finding good quality fast bowling allrounders or finding opening batsmen, or finding real fast bowlers. These challenges have to be addressed, and it's no point worrying. There are lots of positives about Indian cricket.

It's going to be a whole new level of thinking, a whole new level of leadership, of thought, that is required. Like I said, of how the team is going to project itself. You can't just let things flow. If we just let things happen, they will happen. You might get lucky, you might suddenly find a brilliant player or a brilliant fast-bowling allrounder from somewhere, but there needs to be serious thought put into the way the team is and what is the way forward and how we want to see the Indian team, not today but ten years ahead.

When we got together as a group of guys in 2000, it was important for me how the team was projected. We were going through a rough patch, we had come out of this match-fixing thing. We were always known as poor travellers. It was said we were scared of fast bowling, we were arrogant, rude, or that because of match-fixing you can't trust anyone. These were the things that you wanted to change. Ten years later, now there is another challenge. Each team has its own image; that's what you want to change. Maybe this team now has the image where it's said they are very good one-day players, they are not that good as Test players. You keep hearing talk around the place about what impact the IPL might have, how everyone will only want to play IPL and how it might affect our Test cricket. Hopefully these guys will go on challenge that notion, to show us that it is not the case.

The day before the next Test that India plays, if the team called you into the dressing room to make a speech, what would you say to them?
I wouldn't go in! I don't know what my future might be. Somewhere along the line I'm sure I'll bump into the guys. I'll catch up with them. But I don't know if I'd be really comfortable walking into an Indian dressing room now. In some ways I just think that when you move on from there, you move on.

I don't think I was good at speeches, even as captain. The people who inspired me and mattered most to me and whom I looked up to were people who actually walked the talk. Who didn't necessarily speak a lot but you knew that they put in 100% - what they did was an example more than what they said. I did say a few things but I don't think I was the guy who gave a lot of speeches. So, well, if I did go into the dressing room again, I would just tell them that it's their time now, my time has passed.

Sharda Ugra is senior editor at ESPNcricinfo

Feeds: Sharda Ugra © ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

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