•I am at Delhi’s Modern School with its most famous pupil today. Gautam Gambhir, welcome to Walk the Talk.

You seem to like coming back to your classroom?

Absolutely, I think this place has a very special place in my heart. I started my life as a kid at this place and played a lot of cricket. I think a lot of things started from here, especially my cricket. I started taking cricket seriously when I joined this school. Senior school, junior school — there were hardly any facilities. So when I entered this school, we had a very good team at that point of time, we had great facilities as well.

•Every second kid wants to play cricket and wants to be a Gautam Gambhir today, isn’t it?

I hope that thing happens... ultimately, you want to go on to play for your country because that’s the biggest honour when you represent your country. When you wear that uniform, it means a lot, and I think that means a lot to me as well.

•But the going was tough for you to get into the Indian camp, isn’t it?

For me, I haven’t got anything easily. I think I made four or five comebacks in one-day cricket and three comebacks in Test cricket. So it hasn’t been that easy. I have played 67 ODIs till now in my five comebacks. So whenever I go on to the field, I go with this one mindset that this could be the last innings that I am gonna play for my country, and then why not just go out there and give everything that I have.

... contd.