Thursday, December 15, 2011

Sir Rahul Dravid

"Not everything of value has a price"

If you are a cricket fan, listen to Rahul Dravid giving the Bradman Oration. 
If you are not a cricket fan, listen to Rahul Dravid giving the Bradman Oration. And you will become a cricket fan.

I thought Sangakkara's wonderful speech at the Colin Cowdrey Lecture would be the gold standard for speeches made by cricketers. Seems I had underestimated my own hero, the Wall. 

He spoke as one of the seniors of the game (him being the oldest active Test cricketer). His speech covered a wide range of topics. He talked about India's link with Australia (cricket and the British empire), their common enemy (?, England), India's romance with cricket, its love for records, the Indian player, the state of World cricket and problems facing it (balance of the 3 formats, overkill, spectatorless grounds, match-fixing), his own experience. It was well researched with just the dash of humour (Warne's eating habits, his own "slow" batting).  

The speech just showed what the man is all about. CLASS. 
Is 2011 going to be year when the cricket fans finally give Rahul Dravid the respect he has always deserved. (Slipstream Cricket would like to confer the title of Sir to Rahul Dravid)

Audio & text of the speech is available here. http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/current/story/545355.html

P.S. "Creaking Terminators" - WOW. Probably the best phrase to describe veteran sportspersons. Expect this to be overused in the days to come.

2 comments:

  1. Wall is not only man of the matches, he proves that he is also man of words,manners and humanity :)
    http://deepakkarthikspeaks.blogspot.com/

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  2. BCCI should organise 1 test match in INDIA so we can gather and applaud him in the stadium. Virat Kohli and other players will not play like him but I hope they do so for INDIAN CRICKET.

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