Any active sportsman has to be very focused; you've got to be in the right frame of mind. If your energy is diverted in various directions, you do not achieve the results. I need to know when to switch on and switch off: and the rest of the things happen around that. Cricket is in the foreground, the rest is in the background.
In England, it's a rare thing to see a player smoking but, all in all, I prefer that to an alcoholic. The relationship with alcohol is a real problem in English football and, in the short term, it's much more harmful to a sportsman. It weakens the body, which becomes more susceptible to injury.
You cannot allow your desire to be a winner to be diminished by achieving success before and I believe there is room for improvement in every sportsman.
Technique is the basis of every pursuit. If you're a sportsman or you're a singer or a swimmer, well that comes under sport but you have to develop a basic technique to know what you're doing at any given time.
When you have an audience standing and screaming the entire way through the short program and cheering every element you do, whether it's footwork, or spin, or a jump, to have that kind of emotion coming at you from every direction in the building, it's the most amazing sensation you can get as a sportsman.
One guy that really inspired me was Michael Jordan. I wouldn't say that he inspired me as a sportsman, but I love going back and watching videos of him, especially how he conducts himself in interviews. He always seemed to be very careful about the words that he used and thought about everything differently to anybody else.
As a sportsman, my aim was to help sportspersons grow. The idea is to see what is good for sport rather than what's good for individuals.
The sportsman knows that a sport is a recreation, a game, an amusement and a pastime, but his eyes are fixed on a higher goal, on the most important thing in his life, which is his education or his vocation.
Make working out the centre band of core and hips a priority during any training session. As a sportsman, it's the key to any movement and the source of most of your power.
As a youngster, I enjoyed sport and my ambition was to be a great sportsman.