From being Champion of Champions to one of the world's top cricket commentators to Team India's Head coach, Ravi Shastri has an incomparable perspective when it comes to the game of cricket. In Stargazing: The Players in My Life, he looks back at the extraordinary talent he has encountered over the years.

In his memoir co-authored with Ayaz Memon, Ravi Shastri opens on how cricketers across the globe influenced him. The book has been divided into four sections - Growing up into the game; Friends and Rivals; From the Box and Back in the Dressing Room, different avatar.

Garry Sobers for him remains the "most versatile and compelling cricketer of all time. He was my earliest inspiration when I took to cricket almost half a century ago."

Shastri considers Virat Kohli as "a consummate cricketer, with excellent technique that facilitates strong defence and possesses a fantastic range of attacking strokes. What makes Virat tick is his unmatched work ethic. In the four decades I've been around, I haven't seen any Indian player work so hard towards excellence".

Shastri believes along with Virat Kohli, "AB de Villiers is the world's best batsman across all three formats I've seen in the past decade or so. Like Virat, ABD's genius is not only in the quality of stroke play and capacity to score runs consistently, but also his versatility. Both men can switch between Test and limited-overs cricket, and between ODIs and T20s with ease. Where most batsmen show stress and strain in making technical adjustments for different formats, Virat and ABD do it almost subliminally, settling quickly into rhythm, and scoring heavily to leave opponents fretting and fuming.

Shane Warne, according to Ravi Shastri, was the best spinner he has seen. "He may not have the record for the highest number of Test wickets, but what he could do with the ball in his hand was magical and was the reason for many of Australia's victories in his era. He was not only technically brilliant, but loved engaging in a battle of wills with batsmen, out-thinking them, and leading them to their doom."

Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Kane Williamson, Steven Smith, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ben Stokes, Ravindra Jadeja and Rohit Sharma are among the 82 cricketers, Ravi Shastri has paid tribute in over 285 pages.

Shastri was quite impressed the way Richie Benaud carried himself - the thoroughly professional approach he had to do his job. According to him, post-retirement, he was easily the best-known TV Commentator in the game.

Attractively laid-out and logically organised, the book is a superb production indeed. The feature of the book is its collection of black and white photographs, taking it to another level of excellence.