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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Genius doesn't always come in neat packages.

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.

Fairness matters.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Anybody can have a dip in form.

I was a professional cricketer from 16.

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