Hyderabad-born Nadella's lessons from Cricket

The 46-year-old Hyderabad-born Nadella, who takes the reins of the world's largest software services from Steve Ballmer, played cricket as a part of Hyderabad Public School team.

"I think playing cricket taught me more about working in teams and leadership that has stayed with me throughout my career," Nadella said after he was named the CEO of Microsoft.

He also enjoys watching Test cricket. "This is the longest form of any sport in the world. I love it. There's so many sub-plots in it, it's like reading a Russian novel," he said.

A father of three, Nadella also finds reading poetry of Indian and American poets relaxing.

"It's like a code. You are trying to take something that can be described in many, many sentences and pages of prose, but you can convert it into a couple lines of poetry and you still get the essence, so it's that compression," he said.

Talking about his experience at Microsoft, Nadella said he joined the software giant because he saw how "Microsoft empowers people to do magical things and ultimately make the world a better place".

"Many companies aspire to change the world. But very few have all the elements required: talent, resources and perseverance. Microsoft has proven that it has all three in abundance," he said.

Nadella said he "always wanted to build things". "I'm a learner. I think the thing that I realized is, what excites me is that I'm learning something... I fundamentally believe that if you are not learning new things, you stop doing great and useful things," he said.

And one gets to know his zest for learning when he says: "I used to fly to Chicago Friday nights, attend classes Saturdays and come back to Redmond to work during the week."

It took him two-and-a-half years, but he finished his master's degree.