I was 16 years old and being given a car ride to a cricket match by one of my teammates. He was our opening batsman and a good cricket player — I’m guessing around 40-50 years old.

He started asking about how my education was going. I told him that I was about to sit my GCSE exams and was probably going to do sciences for my A-Levels (the exams sat by high school students in England).

He acknowledged my ambitions and then said something to me that I’ve never forgotten. “That’s great, but let me tell you from my experience, that much more so than education and grades…

He then went on to give me some examples of how he believed this to be the case.