Growing up in the 1990s, one came across various kinds of cricket fans in India. A die-hard Sachin Tendulkar fanatic who could not take any criticism of the god; followers of Sourav Ganguly who believed it was Dada’s way or no way; or the occasional Australian fan who thought Steve Waugh / Shane Warne / Ricky Ponting were better than any Indian cricketer. And there was the Brian Lara camp too. In hindsight, all of this might seem silly for some of us, but it is who we were.
But, in a sport where agreement was (and perhaps still is) in short supply, there was one man who was perhaps universally admired for how he went about his game. A certain Rahul Sharad Dravid was many a kid’s favourite but more importantly, was almost everybody’s second most-loved cricketer. It rarely mattered if you were a Tendulkar / Ganguly / Lara / Ponting fan. Dravid still commanded your attention, if not unconditional love.
Over the years, however, there is a strong case to be made for Dravid’s rise to the very top of many fans’ favourite lists. The man who did not quite like the moniker of ‘The Wall’ has, with his off-field charm as much as on-field exploits, brick-by-brick built a reputation of one the game’s greatest.
Also read: The growing legacy of Rahul Sharad Dravid
Part of what has made Dravid the legend he is today is his contribution to the game as a coach, as well as his articulate views on the game.
Two lectures delivered by Dravid (one, still as a player and one, post-retirement) are timeless for the issues he took up and addressed with the finesse that would have matched his cover drive or the purposefulness of his square cut.
MAK Pataudi Lecture
In December 2015, Dravid delivered a passionate speech about the scourge of age-fudging in cricket and why it is no different to match-fixing. At the core of his speech, was a desire to reconnect cricket fans with youngsters.
One of the things he said was:
“I strongly believe that these young kids are the first generation of Indians who could be growing up without a deep personal connection to the game,” he said. “Today’s children have many, many other options. They will grow up to be the thought leaders and opinion makers and fund managers. It is why Indian cricket must reintroduce its children to the game and its magic all over again. They are a very, very serious audience.”
Watch the MAK Pataudi lecture here (starting from around the 3:20 mark):
Bradman oration
“If you like to design somebody to carry the message of the game of cricket in its purest form of playing it, and its form of promoting it by being an ambassador, you couldn’t do it any better than Rahul Dravid.”
That was how Mark Nicholas introduced Dravid at Canberra’s National War Memorial before the Bradman Oration. In December 2011, when India landed in Australia for what would turn out to be a tough tour, Dravid was entering the twilight of his career. He might not have had a Test series to remember but before on-field action began, he delivered a speech that underlined his status as a champion.
His introductory remark was enough to capture the audience’s attention and spoke about his perspective for the game he so loved:
First before all else, I must say that I find myself humbled by the venue we find ourselves in. Even though there is neither a pitch in sight, nor stumps or bat and balls, as a cricketer, I feel I stand on very sacred ground tonight. When I was told that I would be speaking at the National War Memorial, I thought of how often and how meaninglessly, the words ‘war’, ‘battle’, ‘fight’ are used to describe cricket matches.
Yes, we cricketers devote the better part of our adult lives to being prepared to perform for our countries, to persist and compete as intensely as we can - and more. This building, however, recognises the men and women who lived out the words - war, battle, fight - for real and then gave it all up for their country, their lives left incomplete, futures extinguished.
The people of both our countries are often told that cricket is the one thing that brings Indians and Australians together. That cricket is our single common denominator.
India’s first Test series as a free country was played against Australia in November 1947, three months after our independence. Yet the histories of our countries are linked together far more deeply than we think and further back in time than 1947.
We share something else other than cricket. Before they played the first Test match against each other, Indians and Australians fought wars together, on the same side. In Gallipoli, where, along with the thousands of Australians, over 1300 Indians also lost their lives. In World War II, there were Indian and Australian soldiers in El Alamein, North Africa, in the Syria-Lebanon campaign, in Burma, in the battle for Singapore.
Before we were competitors, Indians and Australians were comrades. So it is only appropriate that we are here this evening at the Australian War Memorial, where along with celebrating cricket and cricketers, we remember the unknown soldiers of both nations.
Watch the full Bradman Oration from December 2011 here:
In 2012, noted sports journalist Gideon Haigh was delivering the oration and he started off his speech saying, “Last year, Rahul Dravid delivered perhaps the best and certainly the most-watched of all Bradman Orations, a superbly crafted double-century of a speech on which, I remember thinking at the time, it would be hard to improve.”
“Now I find myself coming in after Rahul, a job so huge that India has traditionally left it to Sachin Tendulkar. By that marker, I can really only disappoint,” Haigh added.
For a man who has played so many stellar knocks for his teams over time, this remains a superlative display off the field by one of cricket’s greatest ambassadors. And, perhaps, the first sign of how successful he would go on to be as a coach, for he was not just a batsman with textbook technique; he was a statesman who thought deeply about the game.
You can read the full transcript of the Bradman Oration here.
