Rahul Dravid: The Sir Donald Bradman Oration 2011

I can’t recall from recent memory any other speech delivered by an Indian that has garnered so much appreciation from people all over the country.

Rahul Dravid is the first Indian to deliver the Sir Donald Bradman Oration. He is loved and admired by millions of people all over the world, and this speech does him, and the country, proper justice (the entire transcript is here). An excerpt:

I know it is utterly fanciful to expect professional cricketers to play the game like amateurs; but the trick, I believe, is taking the spirit of the amateur – of discovery, of learning, of pure joy, of playing by the rules – into our profession. Taking it to practice or play, even when there’s an epidemic of white-line fever breaking out all over the field.