Rahul Dravid was invited as the Chief Guest for the graduating ceremony and his speech is full of inspiration and humour.

Accepting that he was lucky to have been invited to BITS, he joked about how he was ineligible to get an entry in into the college based on his marks.

Sharing a few stories from his own journey he talked about how he, a middle class boy, was inspired by his uncle and father who used to play cricket.

His father took him and his brother to stadiums to watch the greats of cricket play, whenever possible.

To his mind their was no better use of our time. Like any young boy I hero-worshipped my father and my curiosity about this game that he was so passionate about grew progessively deeper. As I spent more time watching the game with him and playing it in my backyard and on the street, my curiosity gave way to interest and before long this interest gave way to love. The seed had been sown.

Talking of an interesting anecdote from his school days, he recalled how his parents were concerned about cricket interfering with his studies when he was in 8th standard, because all he did was play cricket.

When they expressed their concern in front of the school principal and sought his advice, he just said:

You leave his studies to me. I’ll handle that. You let him play cricket.

This was a great turning point in his life because if not for the school principal’s support, he would have had to stop playing serious cricket.

Rahul Dravid played 5 years of domestic cricket before playing for the national team for the first time. It was frustrating for him.

A testimony to his patience, he accepted how domestic cricket prepared him better and gave him a gratifying career.

We can never know everything about him. Watch the entire speech here.