I started to play, like all kids do, not as a goalkeeper. I liked scoring goals; in the end, it's all about scoring goals.
I really loved football from a young age. And my only thought, my only objective in life, was to be a professional footballer.
Everybody recognises that giving young people competitive outlet through sport is a very good thing.
Growing up in Rochdale, I think, all the kids in my street, pretty much every boy was playing cricket. I had four brothers as well, and we played a lot together. When it was just me on my own, I was bowling at a drainpipe.
I've coached grassroots for eight years, I coached middle school, and I coached high school.
Til the day I didn't play under-19 World Cup, nobody ever celebrated my birthday. And the moment I played for Indian team, my family got excited and ordered and cut a cake for me in front of 40-50 family members.
When I was 11 I was scouted by the Thames Valley under-21s. It was really daunting. I was scared for my life when I went in to bat. The first ball hit me on the leg, the second ball got me out, so it wasn't great but it made me stronger.
Youth sports could not exist without millions of volunteers and modestly paid coaches who teach our children how to skate and catch and dribble and also how to get along with others.
In my day, 20-year-olds already had 150 first-team appearances under their belts.
I dabbled in football myself until the age of 14, but I didn't have as much love for the sport as I did track and field. I would never have been good enough to take it to the highest level.
Back in 2011, I was kind of shy. I wasn't as good because that was the year, also, when I started playing basketball.
I was the youngest of about nine boys in the neighborhood, and we played ball all the time, and I looked up to them, and they let me play around with them, and we just had a good time.
I recently started my own NP17 Academy within Liverpool Community College, which gives 16-19-year-old girls an opportunity to embark on a sports career, whether it be as a coach, player, physio, or nutritionist.
My real-life athletic career was not very much. I played Little League baseball.
I was a young kid, and the YMCA was my second home, where my mom was dropping me off for seven, eight hours. I'd spend the day doing what I love: hoop.
Faith, family, academics and then sports was the order of priorities in my family. My parents really stuck to these principles when raising me and my two brothers. As long as we took care of everything, they let us play as much basketball as we wanted.
At 7, I was shooting 3s with so much ease that the guys at the neighborhood park were impressed. Michael Jordan was one of the best humans to walk the earth in my eyes, third only to Jesus and my mother.
I was really good at a young age, but every day I had to walk in the house, and walk past my dad's jersey framed on the wall because he was an Olympian, so I was like, all right, I haven't done anything yet.
As a little kid, I wasn't even interested in football. The first time I played, I was nine, and I volunteered to go in goal, thinking it would be exciting to save penalties. In fact, it was really boring.
When I played Little League, I looked up to the big leaguers, too, and collected their baseball cards.
You hear peewee coaches teaching the 'trap'. What the heck are we doing teaching the 'trap'? Let the kids go, let them have fun; that's how you improve.
When it comes to hockey, it's been in my blood since I was 3 or 4 years old. I love coaching the kids, especially at that level.
I played rugby from the age of 10 until my late twenties; an unlikely player - small, quiet, long-haired and 'wiry.'
I've been lucky in that my parents have always supported me with my cricket, but I've seen so many young Asian girls who don't keep up their sporting interests after the age of 12 or 13.
I'm an English boy. I played a lot of sports growing up, but I never had any kind of workout regimen.
