Monty Panesar | Extraordinary Life Stories

0:07Monty, thank you for joining me. Yeah, thank you for having me on your show. So happy to be here. Thank you. I've been looking forward to this. Tell me, who is Monty Panesar? Yeah, who is Monty Panesar? You know, I look myself in the mirror every day and I think, is this, do I know who this guy is? You know, who am I? I'm still trying to obviously work that out. But the public and the people know me as, you know, the cricketer who played for England. There were some iconic moments. There were some funny moments, you know, became a crowd favourite very quickly. and then became a very popular figure amongst cricket and in England and kind of all over the world when I played.

0:43So that took me by surprise. But my dream always was from a youngster as a 15, 16-year-old, I was like, I want to play for England and that's it. I was a man on a mid-year-old. You achieved your goal. Yeah, yeah. Brilliant. Many people can say that. Yeah, that's true. I think you always aim for a goal, which is probably so far away. But then when you really get there, it's sort of like, I think, oh my God, I finally arrived, you know, I'm playing for England. I want to cover that because I want to know the good and the bad of that, but the early influences, so the 15, 16 year old you aspired to play for England.

1:16What and who influenced that, you know, at that time in your life? Yeah, like I remember as a 10 year old, my dad used to, you know, play cricket in Luton for Luton Tech College and he was an all rounder, number six batsman. And I used to go along and do the scoring. And that's how I got into cricket. every Saturday I'll be the scorer for the team as a 10-year-old. Were you playing as well at school? Yeah I was playing at school as well and then we had a cricket club called Luton Town and Indians which had a youth section Sunday morning go there for practices and you know my dad goes look you're getting a bit sort of podgy as a 10-year-old you know you need to lose a bit of weight so why don't you just go to the practice sessions which actually my dad's you know best mate which was At the time, he was a youth coach.

1:59He kind of like, you know, it was his dream, really. It was the dream of the club to think we want one young cricketer to play for England. And at the time, I used to hate cricket. I used to hate running around the couple of laps. I didn't enjoy it at all. And then we went for a trial, you know, under 12th Bedfordshire trial at Bedford Modern School. I remember the final with England versus Pakistan in the 1992 World Cup when Mwazi Makram bowled two magical deliveries and then he got two wickets and two balls. And I was like, right, that's it. I want to be like this person. And I got into the Bedfisher under-12 teams as a left-arm seamer.

2:34But then at the age of 15, when Paul Taylor was the coach for the Bedfisher under-15s and played for Northlands at the time, he goes, look, I don't think you've got a future in left-arm seam. You just don't have the natural pace or the swing. The ball's swinging from your arm. it doesn't really swing in the air late um i think you may struggle as you get older so why don't you try left arm spin because you've got quite big hands your shoulders were quite broad at the time you can bowl with you know good pace on it and i tried it i thought right let's give it a go i spoke to my coach how valuable is that advice right yeah that's what i mean so like in life you um you come to a point where talent takes you so much far but the guidance will elevate you to the next level.

3:18So you have the option to go either, either take the red pill or the blue pill, right? And importantly to listen as well, right? Which you clearly did. Yeah, exactly. So Paul Taylor at the time said, if you want to be a left arm spinner, you take the blue pill. If you want to be a, you know, a seamer, then you go with your, with the red pill. But then I spoke to my, you know, coach at the time and he goes, well, let's try it. Let's try a left arm spin. And I remember, you know, I played against Worcestershire under 15s at Royal Grammar School. My parents at the time had a Vauxhall Carlton. saloon so it's quite a big car a small little guy sitting at the back and they were just there they dropped me there and they're watching the game and I took seven for 35 and we won the game so we beat like a first-class county team you know Bedfish is a minor county and to beat a first-class county at that time was such a big thing yeah you know it's like you know Luton beating Man United or you know something like that was there a moment you allowed yourself or was that the moment where you would the goal the dream now looks a bit more real did you have a moment like well I can do this and the people around you as well like going Monty's Monty's special yeah yeah at the time you know ECB just appointed like development coaches in every county and David Mercer was the coach for Bedfordshire and he he always pushed me like I was 15 I was playing for under nine in Bedfordshire very quickly then at the age of 16 I played minor counties um you know for Bedfordshire against Cambridgeshire which was at Wardown Park and I took for I took two for 75 of 31 overs and Wayne Larkins, who was the North Ants ex-pro, played for England at the time in the 80s, you know, the likes of Ian Botham and, you know, some of the other greats, Alan Lamb.

4:53And he said to me at slip, he goes, you know, you're going to play for England. And I was only 16. He goes, your action is so smooth. That goes in as well, right? Yeah. So that goes in. Someone else believing in you at that level. That's brilliant. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And he goes, your action is smooth, like, you know, Rolls Royce. You know, you've got a beautiful, smooth action. It's just poetry in motion. and all of that kind of stuff so people kind of believed a lot in me straight away um and then paul taylor at the time i think pushed me you know um like like we say in the right time right place you know you've got the right advice and then when i went to uh north fans went for a trial there i bowled like uh 20 30 balls and then john embry was the head coach at the time one of the great off spinners for english cricket he goes you know just we need to sign him i didn't even he didn't even consider me playing a game of cricket he goes this guy needs to be we need to sign him straight away he goes it's the best spinner i've seen for a long time just his technique technically looks so good everything is just you know perfect for a spinner so i was lucky you know what if a head coach was a batter or a wicket keeper it was a spinner okay yeah they understood you yeah and then did you yeah and then the second team coach was nick cook he was a left arm spinner played for england in the 80s he was so so i was lucky in that sense and then essex wanted to sign me as well at the time and John Charles who was a second team coach was a left arm spinner so that's what I mean like sometimes these things they fall into place because you just have the right people there and you know at the time I was blessed that the head coaches of first class counties were spinners yeah and naturally as a spinner you know you're going to be naturally thinking well I'm going to sign Monty here's my five-year project you know by the age of 16 to 21 we'll get him to play first class county hope to get him to play for England and And that excites.

6:38If you're a head coach as a spinner, you work with the team and then work on your side project as a young someone to push up the system. So I was very lucky, very blessed that I got opportunity. I love the way... There's no ego now. There's no arrogance. You've mentioned luck a lot of times, but you've got to then put the graft in. You've got to put the hard work in. So talk to me about that. So you've got the skill, you've got the ability, and you clearly are someone that takes advice and puts it into practice. but to play for your country your dream you know um talk to me about that sort of work ethic that mindset the sort of lengths you have to go to to get to that point yeah so like i think at the time um i knew things were happening very quickly you know i got signed up from northlands and then my dream was you know i want to play for england and um i remember at the time speaking to the ceo steven steven covendale he was the ceo um at at northlands he goes we want to sign you you know a two-year contract and I said look I want to play for England you know I said I don't want to play for the all-fans I want to play for England I didn't really eyes on the prize eyes was just that was it all I wanted was play for England and I remember I was one of the young millennium kids uh of the end the sun newspaper um you know um there was I was for cricket there was a boxer there was a you know netball player and all that so outside the O2 stadium which was just recently built you know there's a picture of me there so i was either immediately put into the you know the spotlight and i did you enjoy that because you did you thrive on that or did was there an element of uh this is more than just cricket or is it all part of the goal like this is what i'm going to do to get the goal but it wasn't like oh i want to be famous like no that doesn't do the byproduct yeah i never had the desire or the dream in my heart to say oh i want to i want to be famous i want to be the first seek to play for england all it was is can i become like the next phil tufnell right or the next door on Embry for English cricket can I go out there and bowl against the best players in the world and win games for my country and that's it and my love for spin bowling the love for cricket that's what it was you know I loved cricket so much that that's what I wanted to do and it's that love energy that gets you there you know to the top of Everest or top of your goal yeah when things are not going your way or when it's tough and that was that's that was it for me you know that's what I wanted to do but then Stephen Coverdale said to me you you've got to play first class county then if you do well in that then you get picked for england that's how it works so i understood that system you know and then then the journey started yeah and it's almost back to where we we almost began where you said in a play for england i said i want to come back to we're there now and that's your dream looking back with reflection and perspective did you love achieving your dream and was it as good as you wanted it to be once i switched to left arm spin uh you know so paul taylor has always been like you know my messiah of cricket he's the that you know i would say you know the guy who changed my life you know because huge influence yeah if he never told me to do left arm spin i probably would have been playing club cricket you know as a left arm seamer so i always you know thank him for that advice and then after that you know nick cook helped me a lot push me make me try to understand the art of left arm spin because he was a left arm spinner himself john embry would also you know help me when i signed for Northands.

9:46It was an interesting time, you know, at the time I had an option to go either Essex or Northands and Essex had all England captains. So they had Keith Fletcher, Nasser Hussein was captain at the time, Graham Gooch was there, he was the captain of England. And you kind of ask yourself the question, like, should I go on, you know, with Essex, you know, and then afterwards Alistair Cook became captain for England as well. But, you know, Northands was the best place because it's closer to home. And I just thought, you know, it'd be better for me to, you know, to play for Northands. And, you know, thankfully I did.

10:14I had a great time, you know, 10 years there, absolutely loved my time there. It felt like that. Everything I read and watched and talked to countless people that are real fans of you and follow English cricket, they're like, oh, Monty's great. And it wasn't just about the cricket, it was about your personality, funny, you know, engaging, all sorts of stories. And I wanted to touch on that almost like from a mental health point of view, because to be at the top of your game, literally, in that sport, you obviously had to have the mindset. The mindset got you there. It also kept you there. You were consistent, but around you, you know, there was Marcus Truskothik.

10:50I think that was, was I right in saying that was your first test as well. He took himself out because of mental health. Were you aware of that going on? And did you ever have any of your own mental health challenges sort of that you were hiding and masking until you became open about them? Yeah, that's quite a question. I remember at the time when I played with Marcus Truskothik, He was like the father figure of the team. He's the guy you will go towards, you know, when things were going tough or when you found a situation, you know, in the test arena a little bit difficult during game time. You always lean towards him.

11:24And he was a caring guy, you know. He would help. He was that slip for me. He would always say to me, Bollie, a bit quicker, do this. I would listen to him. And he was effectively, his batting was like, you know, like the left-hander Graham Butch, really. And I said to him, I said, I predict, I reckon you're going to play 125 test matches. you're going to score 10 ,000 test runs you know you're like everyone just looked up to him like wow this guy was just mentally strong any situation in the game situation he would just work things out he had a great relationship with Duncan Fletcher he made his batting even more simpler so we all just looked up to the whole team looked up towards Marcus Dreskothic as the guy any pressure situation any tough situation even on and off the field you always go towards Marcus Dreskothic for advice or anything so then for all of us to hear that we were so surprised did you see it you didn't see it coming you didn't see it coming not at all so he was obviously masking that that and yet not feeling he could share that and i think that's a key thing right in that's that high pressure environment there's it's a weakness it was perceived as a weakness i stand corrected because it's not a strength right but back in in those days it does feel like it's changed and that's kind of what i want to come to he didn't feel he could ultimately share until he probably reached crisis so he was masking it he was you know and and i don't know if that's something that you almost felt inspired by to go on your own journey of being very open about your mental health yeah well for me it was like i remember um pca they always send these books or something about you know mental health and at the time it said being strong is actually a weakness you know should open up it was this book and it came in my house i looked at it i looked at the front cover and i threw it straight away in the bin interesting because i thought to myself i'm actually strong I don't need this book.

13:05And I regret that because I wish I read it. We're differently educated now. I mean, vulnerability is a strength. And it's particularly in men. You're in an all-men environment there, right? Yeah. And so you can't show weakness to your colleagues. There's someone else that wants your place. The manager is probably going to go, he's showing weakness, maybe he's not right. And then there's the opposition. You know, they're going to... Because you get a lot of... That's something actually that's quite unique about cricket. There's a lot of heckling, if you like, that goes on. And you've got to manage that for the minute you walk out.

13:37It's days, you know, days out there. Did that ever bother you? Did anything ever get to you in a game that you were like, oh, I just want to react to this? Yeah, like I remember speaking to some of the greats of all, you know, even, you know, international cricket all over the world. And the common theme they always came back to was body language. So even if things are not going great, if things are going really good, your body language has to remain in a balanced approach. So let's say if you're not bowling so well, but the body language has to be good. So then I remember at the time, I spoke to Michael Vaughan about it.

14:11I said, how do you keep your body language positive? Because he embraced my celebrations. He goes, mate, we want that celebration. We want this passion. Yeah, passion. It's like a new breath of fresh air. And he said to me, always look at the advertising boards, which were the second layer up on the ground. He goes, don't look at the second, always look at the second tier and just keep your eyes level on that as you walk. If you're walking down to find leg, don't put your head down because the opposition, the coach. Posture. Yeah, I remember Duncan Fletcher saying to me, he goes, observe the players, you know, observe little clues.

14:48So I would be the guy, you know, when the other batters were over. He goes, tell me what he does when he bowls the Google. Tell me what he does when he does the outswing. And then I'll sit there with my binoculars. watch little triggers and there was a couple of bowlers who will maybe lift this finger or if there's an out swinger they'll do this with the shoulder and every time I'll go up to England coaches and even Duncan I'll tell them I reckon this is going to be an out swinger because he's just pulled his left shoulder or this is going to be a googly because I can see his left index pinky finger just being pointed up so down to the minute tie yeah and then brilliant and then every time that happened we watched it oh yeah that's what's going on so then the other batsmen knew about it And then the batsmen, that's how we used to get like little inside information.

15:30So that's when I really, that's when they, that was very much taught that people observe you more than actually you think, you know, you can coach from observing. So that's a life skill as well. Yeah. Yeah. We'll talk about like in your terminology, innings one, innings two, some of the things you learn there, they're transferable all the way through your life. Right. That's what talking about body language. Someone is a real fan of yours, Tommy, that you've got a 360 degree wrist. so I tried to do my I was like I couldn't get anyone here is there any truth in that no that's a complete lie I was I was busy like what mine's a normal race there's nothing there's nothing there a Monty myth yeah well keep it yeah we'll just we'll edit that out and say yeah I've got it through yeah exactly so let's let's let's go to I wanted to ask you what your your favorite moment perhaps it might not even be your most successful or best moment but just your favorite moment during your sort of England playing days?

16:23Yeah, look, for me, I think obviously getting my first chess wicket, you know, the great Sachin Tanuka was probably the best start I could have had as an international career. And I immediately went into the limelight. I remember at the time, you know, Andrew Flintoff said to me, Monty Mania has started back home. And I didn't really understood what he meant by that. But then every time I celebrated my wickets, I thought I was just celebrating it for myself. And that celebration came from my younger days, you know, my dad, my family my friends we used to always say celebrate your little moments go out and celebrate it so i was like i've got to do it because okay i'm gonna enjoy this as much as i can i'm gonna celebrate the next 30 seconds and embrace as much as i can i love that and i think there's maybe it's a british thing where the reserve didn't subdue but actually everyone wants to let it out so you probably gave everyone an outlook to them like let's let's do it and get behind you and do it themselves right absolutely and everyone at the time when i was playing in the england team you know these were the 2005 you know ashes winners they're kind of like we're all you know actually embracing it they go guys let's celebrate our hundreds let's celebrate our wins let's celebrate each other's success and i think that got even more kind of like you know enhanced and everyone's i thought we finally arrived everyone's dream was to play for england we've got to enjoy every moment of it what's the point you know if we arrived here i love the fact that you did enjoy it because there's there's people i've had the pleasure of speaking to who have achieved huge things but they've been so pressured or in the moment to not necessarily be present it feels like it feels like you were able to do that coming to uh i've talked about the mental health side of these companies when when did you ultimately choose to be use that word vulnerable um and have that empathetic approach to your own mental health because for me that's really brave yeah look i think at the time uh i was working you know with my mentor like neil burns and he kind of said to me he goes look Monty everyone in cricket thinks like you know you're going off the rails you know they can't really relate to why you're not loving cricket and I think I fell you know love out of cricket so when I first got into the England team I absolutely loved everything the fans the media everything that I embraced to it like the harder the challenge the better I became as a bowler and even coaches that to me you know coaches around at the time like I think our spin coach was you know David Parsons even he said because Monty, the thing with you is it feels like you've arrived, you know, at home really.

18:47And any challenges are being thrown at you. You're just loving it. You're getting better and better. And I was because I was completely in love with cricket. But then I fell out of love, you know, with the game. Do you know why? The big veneers is like, for example, maybe, you know, it takes me maybe 60 balls, you know, to get a wicket. But this time it's taken me 90 balls, 100 balls, sometimes 120 balls. So my work rates are double, you know, then what I need to get. And I'm fighting with myself rather than being honest and saying, actually, technically, there's something not quite right. I need to work on that.

19:19But you just you don't want to lose your place in the team, do you? And especially if you're quite a senior figure, you kind of like then think, well, no, everything's fine. You know, I'm in a good place. Everything's OK. And then you just go to the gym, pump a bit of waves, do some running, get the endorphins going. But you haven't really addressed that. Actually, technically, there's something wrong with my action. right when i first started like you said you know i had a nice rules always approach something i'm not doing quite right you know it's something wrong and and and that's the reason you know i'm not addressing that but you fight against it you think i'll practice more and more but you're practicing bad habits you're not practicing good habits it takes you down yeah it takes you down so so a lot of people when they when they do suffer something there's something technically goes wrong in your cricket and when you're in a great place you're technically your alignment's perfect you know and and then you're just in sync you don't worry about your hands or your or your front arm or whatever all of it is just in one motion because your alignment is absolutely perfect but when your alignment's wrong and you fight yourself with it then you fight with it you start doubting yourself then you start hating cricket you think i'm not really enjoying it anymore you're thinking oh the umpires are not going to give this out or the fans you know they probably are not with me or the players are purposely dropping catches you start becoming you know uh you're putting thoughts negative thoughts in your own mind and then you start becoming paranoid um and then and then you know that's when the you know when the confidence goes really low you allow paranoia to come in but when your confidence is high you don't let any of that thought come in all everything is positive so that's what happened at the time and then i then my catheter tending wrote an article in the times about it and um he wrote a very good piece you He understood the sensitive sides on the other side of the game as well, where if you're in a great place, you can see the positive impact of cricket, but then also the dark side of cricket as well.

21:06And I think a lot of people at that time then started to talk about it. Marcus Shaskothik then and I obviously talked about it. Did that help you? Did you feel like you were building a tribe around you? Because you ultimately pioneered a part of that yourself. So you're almost like that, blasting through the doors. and you know probably a lot of judgment a lot of um um negative comments if you like to then start to realize that there's far more people that actually want to be more like that which i dare i say has created a culture that now it really helps people today to be more open and i suppose the question i'd have for you is who helped you through that and what did you do from a coping mechanism to get yourself through that to be clearly you seem very again without and your ego just very happy very content right now which is lovely to see yeah like i think at the time um pca helped me a lot so i used to get like professional advice from sports psychologists and it was mainly talking you know it was more about talking therapy at the time talked a lot and i remember at that time they'll say to me like things like monty you're talking very sort of logical perspective and everything's very logical technical structured there's no emotion there you know like where's the emotion gone you know you're not emotionally connecting to the conversation and maybe that's what ends up happened you know when I when I was loving cricket there was the emotion of love there's emotion of happiness now it's like there's not not emotion everything's disconnected you were in a flow state weren't you everything was joined up suddenly now everything's broken up and disconnected yeah exactly and then you're trying to you know pull the pieces together um and I remember even like you know going on a bit of medication at the time and then um for me it just didn't really work and then when i went to australia paper grade cricket the physio there goes he will also train you know sports psychologists he goes look we're going to make a list now of things you're going to do to combat this because you know that's what you've got to do you've got to dig in deep and we've got to get rid of this every time you don't feel great you're going to go to the gym every time you don't feel good you're going to watch a comedy movie every time you don't feel like a great again have you got five friends that you can speak to and then at the time i probably like actually i don't you know i didn't really have a that's the one thing I wish I had like a best friend when I played for England that I could just knock on his door let my hair down and that was it and I never used to have that you know I was always friends with everyone but not like a close friend that I could just talk about anything I wanted to without the fear of knowing that you know I trust this piece of information because sometimes you know when you're playing as an international sportsman you're worried about your place so if you come across everything is good everything is positive everything is amazing then that gives the confidence to the coach the other teammates think yeah i'll play him in the next game but you mask in it because you don't want to get dropped you've articulated that so well that's a really big relevance of jack we talked about earlier j aq where you can actually have a conversation with a conversation to get information from um someone that's giving their lived experience without being judged because there's a there's a probably a pandemic of loneliness out there right you know at that moment in time you would probably look like you were the life and soul of the party you're killing it uh in terms of what you're doing with um playing for england and so on but actually you're lonely there's no one to talk to you yeah absolutely like loneliness is a breeding ground for mental health issues you know if you're lonely if you're in your room suddenly you're thinking i'm not good i'm this and that you keep giving negative thoughts to yourself right now if i'm now speaking something and i and i say negative or positive the first person that you know the information that goes through is not probably not you it's me because the ears are more closer towards me than you so it's so important that you do positive affirmations say positive stuff about yourself because you're realigning you know your your conscious mind your body your mind soul everything about you in a positive state so you could be in a room and all you're just saying is negative stuff about yourself you know that has a huge impact and suddenly that becomes your belief system you know because you're lonely and then you've got no one to talk to about it and the voices in your own head can be the worst right i'm guilty of that putting myself down and so on it's fascinating so if I use that almost analogy of innings one innings two anyone that goes into sport unless potentially golf knows that at a relatively young age you're going to be you're going to be stopping and doing something else I want to know how much thought you put into that whilst you were playing and of course at a certain point you lost the love of the game which is probably really frustrating because this was my goal this was my dream but then to sort of almost flip it into right here right now you look healthy you look like you're keeping yourself in shape and what does Monty want to do and what he's doing with innings too yeah well innings too like obviously I went to university you know did a master's in sports journalism so um after that you know I what I want to do is like you know work in the media we're working the obviously on on tv as well like you know a lot of people said to me at the time when I do you know after dinner speaking and all of that or even during I bet you're brilliant at that motivational speaking yeah people love it but they say to me like Monty like you've got young children to the older generation to the middle generation everyone knows who you are and he goes that's a very rare thing to have as a sports person where all age groups all backgrounds know who you are and he goes you'll be very good you know on tv and if you can get there you know because you're quite a unique personality of your own you know a own way of you know doing things and and is a quite you know you're an entertainer he's a very popular figure so he goes you know tv is one option you know for you to go there so i did obviously the degree and then you know working as a uh you know as a sports presenter in cricket you know ideally if i can work on some of the you know big stations you know like sky sports have my own show on talk sport and then maybe you know like a chat show host competing against jonathan ross and graham norton you know called monty meets who was i was going to say so because you you kept it on sport i was thinking there's more than that there's a whole personality so actually you you would love to go into more the the entertainment side of things right because you would be great at that yeah i don't mind that at all you know and i love to be like a great you know like a like a journalist someone who you know who kind of like you know like sometimes when you do the journalism degree you learn what a clickbait is you learn how to polarize opinions you learn how to change a narrative you know to create a story and all that kind of stuff yeah so you know that kind of stuff you know i love to do because when you when you're playing cricket you know you have like um you take a wicket you get you know that buzz of of taking a wicket 30 40 thousand fans cheering and you're and you're loving it adulation yeah and you're always searching for that same level of buzz um and it may just be you know in the media entertainment industry as a presenter you know where where you make a difference trying to entertain people we're also talking about you know many other different things as well so we have amazing perspective and actually some people could find that intimidating i won't lie if there was 20 000 30 000 people watching us right now it's a whole different conversation you've done it you've done it not in that context but Well, you have.

27:49You've got interviews in front of, you know, the world. So actually, no, that's not something you even need to think about. You can just be yourself, but you've now got the training as well. So yeah, yeah. In context of using that as training, when, when you were ultimately playing cricket, you were keeping yourself super fit. You still look like you do. So I'm interested because that would have been all part of a goal. So you'd have been playing on Saturday and you're getting ready for that. You haven't got that now. How, how would you keep yourself motivated and what do you still do and do you still play cricket recreationally yeah i still play like club club cricket um you know on a saturday at the moment i'm playing obviously you know great richard cricket club in in norfolk um and i still love you know um getting involved in doing the charitable stuff you know with lost taverners and other so like a challenge though yeah it's a challenge attachment do you what i suppose i'm asking is do you go to the gym in the morning and do a workout to keep fit or do you put the challenges in place for charity because it makes you have a goal to go for do you know i mean you still need that goal mission if you like look i think fitness health and fitness is really important for me you know because if i you know if you want to work on on tv as a presenter then uh you know you need to look good in good shape you need to look healthy and fitness is really good i love fitness you know i love training i love doing you know weights always kept that up you know to do my swimming or you know all of that kind of stuff even even the running side of things as well so yeah i i love doing you know all of that recently going to pilates and you know that's something you know really good as well so yeah yeah so i i love you know all health and fitness things um and it's just part of your part of your makeup and that's part of your lifestyle and i absolutely love yeah i love it no it's good i always ask people this next one of those stories um you've you've ultimately achieved a lot of success in your career and it feels like you're going to have a lot more success to come sitting here now how do you define success i think you define success as if i set a goal and i want to get to a to b can i get to that place you know and then you do and then you just do everything you can to get to that place so you you you know you know where you're going or what direction that is um and and for me i'm going to just try and do that you know and try and keep pushing myself because it keeps you motivated it keeps you productive it keeps you in a positive for in my mind it's a purpose you know every day you know why why am I going to the gym early in the morning why am I doing this training course why am I going and doing these meetings what's my big why and where I want to be so you know like there's you know you look at so many different celebrities like you know for example when it comes to health and fitness I looked at Dwayne Johnson for example you know you'll go to the Oscars 4 a.m he's in the gym next minute you know at 10 a.m he's doing a film shoot right and I'm thinking wow here's a guy who is just pushing himself being so productive can i do that in my life can i be as productive as him and that's the challenge you set yourself can i exactly you know what i did in my first innings as my career as a cricketer can have it equally or even a better second innings and that that drives you and he just keeps you motivated it's a great drive and you've proven concept so actually you've got confidence and you've got um you've got ability so i can feel that brimming off you i could talk to you for much longer i'm conscious of time but i wanted wanted to ask you an end on on probably the who's the who's the greatest cricketer you and you're not allowed to say yourself i can say that but you can't that you've played with and against i think played with was probably uh andrew flintoff you know the way he was on and off the field like i never seen it with any other cricketer um was just unbelievable you know this guy you know he was like for me he'll be like Like, I never knew what Ian Botham was like in the 80s, right, how big he was.

31:25And I thought, yeah, I can see this is probably the closest thing. Freddie, you know, just had a massive magnitude off the field. Everybody just wanted big character. He's of, yeah, Andrew Flintoff. Like, he's the honey and all the flies are just coming towards him. I just couldn't believe, like, the magnitude of the guy. And you can see why they say he's a national treasure. And then against was Sachin Tendulkar. You know, his demeanour, how he handled pressure, how he handled fame, how he is as a person as well. You know, in his presence, I remember playing a game in Bangalore last year with him.

32:01And just to be in his presence, he learns so much, how he, you know, just conducts as a person. And there is something special about him, you know, off the field as a human being. I know he's achieved so much in terms of his cricket ability, but off the field as he is as a human being, and I just love the way he conducts himself. It's unbelievable. Yeah, well, I thoroughly enjoyed everything about our conversation. I've learned loads from you, Monty. I hope you've enjoyed talking to me. I've loved it. So thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks so much. Thank you, mate. Thank you.