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Please criticize me, but how can you accuse me of something like fixing a cricket game after all that the game has given me.
When people talk about South Africa, it's all about lions and elephants. But when we talk about India, we talk about tigers.
Whether a player has played one match or a hundred, we should give him respect for what he has achieved and leave it at that.
You need to perform consistently, and if you're raising the standard, you have to stand by it. You have to keep on doing well.
I am always the one who is responsible for anything bad that happens in Indian cricket. Everything that happens is because of me.
I don't think I will ever make my all-time greatest India team. You cannot compare one era with another, as they will be different.
If the batsman is playing good shots, you accept it, but it is important that we bowl according to what the plan is and not go off it.
It doesn't matter which year a player is born in, whether you are 19 or 20 - you have to be agile. You have to accept your shortcomings.
I resigned from captaincy because I wanted the new captain to get enough time for preparing a team before the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019.
I never thought of playing for any other franchise other than CSK. Chennai is my second home. Fans here have adopted me as one of their own.
For me, it's important to build good partnerships rather than score centuries. Once, you have those partnerships, you will also get centuries.
Cricketers have a very short shelf life. On an average, you make money through cricket for five years, but you need to survive for sixty years.
Even when you bowl a bad over, try to restrict it in between 15-18 runs, because if you go higher than that, it has a bigger impact on the game.
During a packed season, maintaining fitness becomes tough because you can't put too much effort into it. You're constantly monitoring workloads.
Maybe because I bat aggressively and go for big hits at times, people tend to remember my batting. But I have always done well as a stumper, too.
We have always made sure that players who have played for CSK, even those who came from other franchises for whatever reason, have performed well.
I'm quite used to playing with few injuries, whether it is back, fingers, elbow, or something else. You have to be tough and get on with the game.
After the first ball is bowled, it's only chaos. What you are trying to do is you're trying to manage the chaos. It's not like a script that happens.
I don't study cricket too much. Whatever I have learned or experienced is through cricket I've played on the field, and whatever little I have watched.
I believe in giving more than 100% on the field, and I don't really worry about the result if there's great commitment on the field. That's victory for me.
You have to see that cricket is developing as a sport because what's very important is you want cricket to be a global sport when it comes to participation.
One of my theories is to be captain on the field and off the field, you need to totally enjoy each other's company. I don't like discussing cricket off the field.
The biggest learning during my tenure as a captain was that, a lot of time, I used to think that this is common sense. But no, there is nothing called common sense.
You go through tough times. What I personally believe in is you should forget the stats. But also, it pushes you to see the areas where you have to work on to be a consistent team.
Gut feeling is all about the experiences that you have had in your life. It is about being in difficult scenarios, knowing what worked, what did not work, and then taking a decision.
For me, fielding and running between the wickets are two things that are very important. For that, you need to motivate the guys about how much of an effect it will have on the game.
In tennis ball cricket, even it's hit from the toe of the bat, the ball still travels a lot, but in normal cricket, it has to be the middle part of the bat, so it requires a lot of work.
If you have forest, if you have green forest, the water table goes up. What happens with deforestation is the water level goes down and we all know how much importance drinking water has.
Self-confidence has always been one of my good qualities. I am always very confident. It is in my nature to be confident, to be aggressive. And it applies in my batting as well as wicketkeeping.
I have formed the Mahendra Singh Dhoni Charitable Trust which organises cricket tournaments in Jharkhand to identify promising cricketers so that we can help groom them, either in India or abroad.
One-day cricket is about aggression and flair, but Test cricket is a different ball game. One has to struggle through the hard periods initially and then look on to get a respectable score on the board.
My dad and my brother were more keen on football, but I used to play canvas-ball cricket while at school in Ranchi, and we would have cricket coaching camps in the summer vacations. That's how I started.
Cricket is not everything, not by any means, but it is a large part of who I am. Therefore, I want to play in all formats of the game and to play as much as possible because, before long, it will be over.
You can't make three or four spinners bowl the exact number of overs. You don't see the number of overs bowled by them before you make a bowling change; you see who looks effective and make a bowling change.
You need more individuals who can do more than one job in the field. Especially if all of them are good fielders and if they can contribute with bat and ball if needed. Just adds to the strength of the side.
What is important is to have a positive intent right from the start, and positive intent doesn't always mean looking for the big shots. Positive intention when it comes to defending a ball or looking for a single.
Till the 10th standard, I was quite good - I got 66% that year. After my 10th, I got really involved with cricket, so I didn't have any time to study. And my parents didn't push me, either, which was very good for me.
After one Olympics, if we invest in sports and say we will get a gold medal in the next Olympic, it doesn't work like that in sports. How it works is that you provide the infrastructure, provide education about nutrition and health.
Finishing is one of the most difficult things to do in cricket. A player can't be a finisher in just 6 months or one year. You have to be used to that responsibility, keeping on doing what is required from you over a period of time.
I think it is always a challenge when you go and play abroad. You are competing against the home team, and they know the conditions well. Their fast bowlers always know which length to bowl and also the areas in which they need to bowl.
If you don't perform, and you're part of the team, whether you're playing your first Test or 50th Test match, criticism goes hand in hand, so that's something you can't really get away from. If you don't perform, you will be criticised.
Let me tell you, it is an absolute lie that I told a probe panel that Meiyappan was only a cricket enthusiast. All I said is he had nothing to do with the team's on-field cricketing decisions. I can't even pronounce the word 'enthusiast.'
Making important medicine more available and affordable is a great thing for the country, and Netmeds is one the mainstays in the space. They have a long legacy in the pharma business, and they are making it easier for people to stay healthy.
When I was playing for my school, the only thing I wanted to do was get selected for the Under-16 or the Under-19 district teams. When I was selected for the district, I would think about the next level, which was getting selected for the state side.
If you play cricket for India, money is bound to come, and with IPL in and match money of the Ranjhi trophy, I think money is there. There's no good reason why you should not work hard, because at the end of the day, you want to play for your country.
We have to understand that the five-day format has its own uncertainties, unlike ODIs or T20s. In ODIs, you know that you have to field for 50 overs only, while in Test cricket, there may be a situation that a team might bat for one-and-a-half to two days.
Since 2005, I have not spent much time with my family. In fact I have spent more time at the Taj Landsend in Mumbai. It was my 100th visit recently, which means I have spent more than 400 days in that hotel, and that is a lot more than I have spent with my family.
The more allrounders you have, the more difficult it becomes for the opposition. The reason being, if you have players who can bat and bowl, and if they are proper allrounders - they may be spinning or fast-bowling allrounders - they add to the strength of the team.
I don't believe in calling someone and having a big chat, because that puts a lot of added pressure on them. If somebody is doing something or involved in fielding practice, then a little chit-chat at that time helps because it's informal and doesn't add any pressure.
What we have seen is that sports is definitely developing in India. I can see a lot of positive things happening in India. It may take a bit more time, but with proper guidance and people having passion for sports, I don't think we are far away from becoming a good sporting nation.