Sports teaches you there is always a second innings in life. If you fail today, there's a second innings maybe two days later. Maybe there's another opportunity coming up three or six months later. If you look at mistake as learnings and commit never to make a same mistake again, then you actually get better with every mistake that you make.

Conflict of interest and lack of transparency, though they are global features as we saw post-Iraq, almost define Indian cricket.

For a long time, television said, 'We won't cover cricket unless you pay us to cover it.' Then they said, 'OK, the next rights are sold for 55 million dollars. The next rights are sold for 612 million dollars.' So, it's a bit of a curve, that.

Sometimes your greatest strength can emerge as a weakness if the context changes.

I always think of it in terms of music. You're not always going to be a huge rock star in music, but musicians can play until the day they die. With sports, it's different. You can't always do it until the very end, and that's a hard reality of sports.

As a child I was very involved with sports and I knew at age 9 that I wanted to be an Olympic champion.

I assisted Bobby Houghton at Halmstads, and we were both just under 30. We'd say, 'Wouldn't it be great to do this for maybe 10 years, save a little money, then perhaps start a little business together.' Some sort of travel agency. We had no football thoughts beyond that, other than maybe combining it with a bit of sport, getting a few tours going.

I played for the first time when I was three. My neighbour was six, and I went to train with him. But I don't have many football memories from when I was young.