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The celebrations inside dressing rooms are always special. We recently celebrated Baroda captain Connor Williams’s completion of 100 first-class games, in Amritsar. It makes it special for the player when he knows that the team is out there to support him and acknowledges his achievements.

Apart from regular team meetings, there is a lot one can learn in the dressing rooms. When I walked into the Bombay dressing room for the first time, I was in sheer awe. I had always wanted to be a part of that team. And there I was, able to spend with all the seniors I had heard about, seen on TV.

I have played under Ravi Shastri, Sanjay Manjrekar and Sachin Tendulkar. Sharing the same dressing room, I got to know about their habits, their superstitions, their approach towards the game, their preparation for the games, and the way they tackled situations. It was an enriching experience that helped me later in my career.

Almost every player has superstitions. One of the most obvious ones was Tendulkar’s who used to sit two seats from me. He would always wear the left pad first. There are others who sit in a certain manner, who don’t like to talk out of superstition, but Tendulkar’s left-pad-first was an obvious one.

In dressing rooms one also gets used to behavioural patterns of different players. For example if Vinod Kambli got out early, we knew everything in the dressing room would fly around. So the moment he got out, the dressing room would go empty. For the next ten minutes, a bat would fly here, helmet there, and no-one would enter. After sometime, we would come back and settle down again.

Tendulkar would react differently. He would just keep his equipment down and be on his own. Some others would abuse themselves out loud for having played a bad shot. But the beauty was that we knew how an individual would react, and would give him his space so that he could settle down.

The Indian dressing room was an entirely different feeling. It takes a while there to adjust. Firstly there is a mix of immense happiness and pressure that makes the newcomer nervous. Over the years when one has represented a state, one associates with certain individuals. For example it was not only Tendulkar in the India dressing room, but players from other states too that I had to get used to. Moreover, everyone else has his habits. For every venue, every individual has his own seat and he has been in that position for many years. For a newcomer it can be tricky when he searches for his seat, because he has to make sure he doesn’t sit in a seat where someone else has kept his stuff. And one can tell from looking at the equipment which seat is Tendulkar’s and which is Rahul Dravid’s. And then when one finds a seat for oneself, it is a feeling like no other.

Same is the case when teams travel. Players have fixed seats in buses where they like to sit every time, so a newcomer has to be careful with that too.

There is an unsaid pact in any dressing room: that whatever happens there stays there. I have not seen many people discuss outside what has gone wrong in the dressing room. That trust in each other is a trademark of any dressing room.

At different venues, one encounters different settings. Eden Gardens, for example, hasn’t changed much over the years. Still there are only 15 seats, sufficient only for players. The support staff that nowadays travels with the teams is often seen sitting outside. In Mohali, one dressing room is named after Kapil Dev and the other after Sunil Gavaskar, the former for the home team. The souvenirs and the photographs on the way to the dressing rooms make a player feel special.

The Wankhede Stadium has given me the fondest memories of my career. I will never forget the celebrations inside the dressing room after we won the Ranji Trophy in 2003 – I was the captain then. When I sat there after it all, champagne flowing all around, it slowly sunk in that we had won the Ranji Trophy. It is a special feeling because you are there with the people who had made the success possible.

Mumbai, the home team, always take the dressing room on the left side at the Wankhede. Last season, when I was Bengal’s coach and we went there to play the final, it felt a bit strange when I turned to the right. The corridor that leads to the dressing rooms is full of photographs of players who have done well for Mumbai. When I saw my picture there, it gave me a sort of satisfaction that I had contributed to the team and that the association recognised it.

Well done Paras. Superb article. This one is streets ahead of your previous articles. Looks like you have found the right gear.

Cricket is capable of helping you to find life time friends. In fact most of my friends are the ones I've played cricket with and we've been friends for almost 25 years. We still recall the wonderful moments enjoyed on and off the field when we played cricket.

Cricket does a few other things to youngsters. It helps them mix with new people, forces them to understand personalities and teaches them to work with a group. Also if you are an active cricketer then you will be short of time juggling various things that the typical teenage attractions go out of the window as you grow up loving the sport.
Your temperament improves greatly as you learn to handle situation and try to perform when required.

Looking forward to some more such articles from you.