This worked. Thank you, both of you.

This works perfectly. Thanks

Thank you for your responses. I tried all the 3 solutions, and like to share with you the results

1) using sp_executesql, I did the following

execute sp_executesql 

 N'SELECT top 1 * FROM...

This reply may be too late, but I am new to this site. I answer the question I understand as below:

1- How do you create a baseline for performance tuning?...