"It appeared as if the whole nation stood up to greet me in Ahmedabad on my taking the 432nd wicket. The country was proud and that made me really happy...This was the first time in my life I realized what it is to be the number 1 in the world. It is a heady feeling almost out of the world."

“Tournaments like the World Cup, they are a bit like that -- you can't start out by thinking of how you will play the final at Lord's. You look at your first opponent and you think how to defeat him, then you think of your next opponent. It doesn't matter who you think you might meet in the final, you should only think of your next match. That is the only way to win a tournament, that is what we did in 1983, we played one match at a time...”

“When we returned India, we realised how the countrymen had celebrated the win! Everybody was over the moon. Some of them said that the August 15, 1947 came back.”

“What is required is self-belief, most importantly. And secondly, you should be ready to listen, to be strong to acknowledge what your weakness is, and learn, improve... If you have that, then all this that you are talking about, fielding, running between wickets, they are all minor things...”

“Well, the Caribbeans were far superior on paper but we could utilize the English conditions better during the tournament. Mind you, we had won against bigger opponents, matches after matches. I think nobody can deny that. How could then it be termed as a fluke?”

“Look, if you take the best batting team in the world, they too will have their weaknesses -- otherwise, wouldn't they win all the time? You mention any team to me, and I will pick out for you a dozen weaknesses. But that is not the point -- these things, like fielding, running between wickets, all these are technical things, they can be learnt and practised.”

“If you stand under a mountain and look up, you will get a bad pain in the neck. If you look at the ground and take one step, and then another step, then you come to a little bump. You think of how to climb over it; then you find a gap and you jump over it and you go on like that, one step at a time, and suddenly, you find yourself standing on top of the mountain.”