Widely regarded as one of the finest batsmen in the history of the game, former Indian cricketer Rahul Dravid’s talent as a raconteur par excellence kept a Mumbai audience enthralled recently. A nattily dressed Mr. Dravid was the guest of honour at the second edition of the Star Re.Imagine Awards, established to recognise creativity and the use of integrated media in advertising campaigns aired during the IPL on Star Sports and Hotstar.
Popularly known by his nickname ‘The Wall’ Mr. Dravid showed his lighter side, keeping the audience amused with anecdotes from his past — as a model for several successful advertising campaigns. In a free-wheeling chat about cricket and his subsequent roles in ad films for consumer products, Mr. Dravid talked about cricket’s rules of the game which were often in stark contrast with the glamorous ad industry.
As a disciplined sportsperson, adhering to time and punctuality were concepts that were drilled into Mr. Dravid since his training days. From reporting for training and practice at sunrise to match start at 9 a.m. or under a scorching sun at 2 p.m.. So the disciplined cricketer, was bemused when he found a sportsperson’s primary rule being flouted in the advertising world. Recalling the flexible idea of time during his ad debut he said, “The first commercial I ever did was for Pepsi. It was a good learning experience. They needed three days of my time and I needed to be in Bombay,” Mr. Dravid told the enrapt audience.
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And then in his characteristic fashion, Mr. Dravid hit the bullseye when he elaborated, “When you are a cricketer, you are used to the match starting on time. If people say that the match starts at 8 o’clock, it will start at 8 o’clock. But when I am told that the sets (for ad film shooting), starts at 10 o’clock, I am there but the director is not there. I am actually receiving people! And I am thinking what’s going on here? I thought that it will start at 10 … then I quickly came to realise that when it comes to shooting ads, time is not really … when they say it’s 10 o’clock, it can be 12.”
Youthful ambition
As a young cricketer, Mr. Dravid said he had seen famous Indian cricketers in ads, and nursed similar ambitions. And as a successful cricketer, he was offered several ad campaigns. Mr. Dravid has featured in Pepsi, Britannia and Castrol commercials. “Perhaps the hardest to do was the ‘Jam Jam Jammy’ ad. My father worked for Kissan Products for 30-odd years. That’s how I got my nickname ‘Jam’ when I started playing the Ranji Trophy. Jawagal Srinath started to call me ‘Jam’ because Kissan was making juices and jam. The shoot for the ad was in Madras in May, and I had to wear all those costumes. I remember throwing up halfway through the ad, probably because of the heat. But in the end it meant a lot to my father. So that’s my favourite ad film,” he said.
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Mr. Dravid articulated his respect for all the “interesting and fantastic” professionals that he’d worked with. “I came to know how ads are made. Growing up, I [had] seen Kapil Dev in ‘Palmolive Da Jawab Nai’ and Sunil Gavaskar also, and [wondered] whether I will able to do all that. I got the opportunity to see what goes on, the creativity, in putting an ad together.”
For the audience, primarily made up of creative minds of the commercial ad world, it was a rarely seen side of a serious career cricketer — candid, humorous and a talented storyteller.