When I was younger I only read sports books. I loved the biographies that told how athletes developed. When I got into coaching, I did start to read more instructional books, but I was always more interested in the people behind the ideas.
While writing my first 90 books, I was magazine editor, publisher, book publisher, executive, etc., so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area.
'30 for 30s' are amazing. They're little documentaries and can be anywhere from half an hour to an hour-and-a-half - great sports stories.
I'm always embarrassed by those rugby player autobiographies which get written by journalists.
As a kid I was fascinated with sports, and I loved sports more than anything else. The first books I read were about sports, like books about Baseball Joe, as one baseball hero was called.
Some guys are just very, very interested in their sport and their predecessors. I know I was a guy like that when I was a young coach. I wanted to know about George Halas, I wanted to know about Jim Lee Howell, guys you don't even know. I wanted to know what they were like. So I read whatever I could get my hands on.
I would never go to a cinema hall to watch a biopic on a cricketer. I am not a big fan of people making biopics on sportsmen, especially cricketers. I think there are far bigger people who have done much more for the country, and films should be made on them.
There's so much information out there. There are written biographies of Gavaskar and Kapil Dev, there are interviews, and we have had the benefit of meeting these players. There's a physical and psychological aspect, and combining these two is what will help '83' connect with the millenials and cricket lovers.
