I spend too much time away from home. I love travelling, but we can be away for as much as four months during the winter.

My dad was a keen cricketer - he played at school and club level - but it was hard for him to find time for it because he was a farmer, so he encouraged me and my brother.

I love Rome and the way that you can wander around and find something interesting around every street corner. You can smell the history.

With new fast bowlers on the international circuit few and far between, it's always good to see someone new coming through.

It takes very little effort to make someone happy.

Flying my own small plane is my escape. I learnt to fly in 2006 and share ownership of a Socata TB10.

We don't cover too many draws in Test cricket and its great: it means the cricket is more interesting, more exciting.

In Test cricket, you have to be adaptable.

In any international sporting career an opportunity comes along that you have to grab. Mine came at Old Trafford in 1985 when I was recalled to the England team to face Australia. It was a huge chance to prove I belonged in the Test side but I failed to take it.

Bowling on English pitches is not rocket science. If you bowl a good length on off stump, the ball just has to do a fraction, up or down or side to side, and you get someone out.

When you are captain at the same time, that's when it gets difficult and when your own game starts to decay because you have other worries and pressures.

Any decent coach can make more than enough money just doing three or four T20 leagues.

I was a professional cricketer from 16.

Anybody can have a dip in form.

My relationship with my kids is the one sad area of my life.

I'm not much of a reader; I'm more of a laptop person. I would never consider travelling without it.

Without television, cricket would be a poorer place;the two have to coexist.

It's all you hear on a cricket field - 'Knock his head off, knock his head off.' Cricket has gone too far. It shouldn't be posturing, abusing.

There are times when it's difficult to see your wife and her ex-husband sitting next to each other chatting away.

Cruising on the old rice boats in Kerala, southern India, with my wife was amazing.

I played in Sri Lanka, so I know how hard it is to come here and win. The weather is baking hot and the conditions are alien to English cricketers.

Tillakaratne Dilshan is innovative and scores quickly, while Upul Tharanga is neat and well organised - and left handed.

The Twenty20 is itself a banal game, a crude game, but it works, so I hope Twenty20 commentary works.

Fairness matters.

A good commentator is someone who obviously people like listening to, who gets the blend between description, entertainment and accuracy of conveying the event right. If you can do that in an interesting way, you are a good commentator.

Genius doesn't always come in neat packages.

I cannot believe that people really sit and devote hours of their lives watching reality TV like 'Big Brother.'

For me, Test cricket at its best is all about ebb and flow of initiative, and it's always a fascinating moment of the match for me when one sides snatches it from the other.

Virender Sehwag can tear any attack apart. He is audacious, takes risks and has fantastic hand/eye co-ordination.

It is difficult to master the skill of scoring runs from a 90mph delivery that is dug into your armpit or is fizzing past your nose.

The truly great players have this advantage over the rest of the international elite, gifted though those others are: they have the ability to slow down a ball travelling at 90mph, to move before others can, to make the world adjust to their rhythm rather than the other way round.

There's little that's subtle about Hardus Viljoen - he's a broad-chested, broad-shouldered fast bowler, who simply trundles up to the wicket and hurls it down as fast as possible.

A disciplined, patient, defensive period in a Test match is not old fashioned and boring - it's essential.

Players like Alastair Cook do not come around very often. To play for so long and achieve so much says everything about his fitness, concentration, discipline and skill.

Opening the batting in Test cricket, facing up to fast bowlers looking to do their worst with a new, hard ball is incredibly tough. You have to be brave, single-minded and prepared to work very, very hard.

The old player in me can certainly sympathise with how your targets change because you simply do not know what is around the corner.

I think most cricket fans would accept that Dravid and Tendulkar are very different individuals but they are both great players.

Indian fans probably warm to Tendulkar more, because he was their darling from a very young age and he is a class above anyone else in his team. But in any other generation Dravid would be there by himself.

Preparation is not just about batting and bowling. You have to consider lots of things - the travel, the weather, the heat, the light, the sounds. You have to be comfortable with everything.

When you think of the great eight-wicket bowling figures in Test history, the names of Michael Holding, Shane Warne and Stuart Broad spring to mind.

This is Test cricket. Being positive is not far away from being reckless. For all that the sport has become more fast-flowing and entertaining, you still need batsmen whose first instinct is to be patient.

The art of coaching is to give a player freedom to bring out his talent. It is the player's responsibility for what happens once they are on the pitch.

As a player, when things are going against you, you look to the captain to inject some energy but I don't see any of that from Amla.

It is nothing new for the management of an international cricket team to wrestle with the amount of freedom afforded to players.

It is not difficult to come up with a long list of cricketers who like to have a good time - from the village green to the Test arena, it is a sociable sport.

By empowering players - not just players, but grown men - to think for themselves outside of the game, you hope that they will be more likely to adapt to a situation and seize the moment in a sporting contest.

You do not want cricketers who are cowed by adversity, waiting for someone to tell them what to do.

Word can spread quickly around the international circuit if a player is perceived to have a fault, particularly if it is against short bowling.

Pietersen is an incredibly confident cricketer, almost brash.

As lots of us ex-pros know, you are a long time retired and there comes a stage when you would give anything to be back out there playing.