While everyone is talking about Sachin deserving his first World Cup win, there's one man ufffd Mohammed Azharuddin ufffd who doesn't want to talk about the batting maestro at all. Read on...

The last time a cricket World Cup was played in the Indian sub-continent, Mohammed Azharuddin was the man in the frontline. As captain of India in 1996, he had the responsibility of emulating Kapil Dev's 1983 Cup-winning feat.

A splendid quarter-final win over Pakistan in Bangalore was followed up by heartbreak in Kolkata where eventual champions Sri Lanka saw off India in the semi-finals.

Today, the 48-year-old Azharuddin is a politician. And as GQ India magazine discovered in the below interview, detached from the game.u00a0

Excerpts:

A number of your retired colleagues, like Gavaskar, Shastri and others, have taken to commentating. And they are raking it in. Didn't want to try that?
For me, to have played cricket and then to sit for six hours and comment would have been a tough job. I did get offers, but they were not very lucrative. Also, people jump from one channel to another, and I didn't want to do that.

If I had got a five-yearu00a0 contract from one channel then maybe I could have done it. In fact, I hardly watch much cricket now.

Sounds like you've lost passion for the game.
I am quite passionate about the game. But I have chosen a different life now. I can't get stuck in the same time. One has to move on in life.