RAHUL DRAVID

RAHUL DRAVID'S EARLY LIFE: Rahul Dravid was born on 11th January 1973 at Indore,Madhya Pradesh in a Marathi family. His family later moved to Bangalore, Karnataka. His mother tongue is Marathi. Dravid's father worked for a company that makes jams and preserves. His mother, Pushpa, was a professor of Architecture at the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE), Bangalore. Dravid has a younger brother named Vijay.

RAHUL DRAVID'S SCHOOLING & COLLEGE LIFE: Dravid did his schooling at St. Joseph's Boys High School, Bangalore and earned a degree in commerce from St. Joseph's College of Commerce, Bangalore. He was selected to India national cricket team while studying MBA in St Joseph’s College of Business Administration.

RAHUL DRAVID'S CRICKET LIFE: Rahul Dravid started playing cricket at the age of 12, and represented Karnataka at the under-15, the under-17 and the under-19 levels. Former cricketer Keki Tarapore first noticed Dravid's talent while coaching at a summer camp in the Chinnaswamy Stadium. Dravid scored a century for his school team. He also played as wicket-keeper. Dravid made his Ranji Trophy debut in February 1991, while he was still attending college. Playing alongside future Indian teammates Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath against Maharashtra in Pune, he scored 82 runs in the match, which ended in a draw. His first full season was in 1991–92, when he scored two centuries and finished up with 380 runs at an average of 63.3, getting selected for the South Zone cricket team in the Duleep Trophy.

Rahul Dravid is a former Indian cricketer and captain, widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket.  Hailed as The Wall, Dravid was named one of the best five cricketers of the year by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack in 2000 and received the Player of the Year and the Test Player of the Year awards at the inaugural ICC awards ceremony in 2004.In December 2011, he became the first non-Australian cricketer to deliver the Bradman Oration in Canberra.As of October 2012, Dravid is the fourth-highest run scorer in Test cricket, after Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis, and is only the second Indian cricketer, after Tendulkar to score 10,000 runs both in Tests and in ODIs. In 2004, after completing his century against Bangladesh in Chittagong, he became the first and the only player till date to score a century in all the ten Test-playing countries.As of October 2012, he holds the record for the most number of catches taken by a player (non-wicket-keeper) in Test cricket, with 210.In August 2011, after receiving a surprise call in the ODI series against England, Dravid declared his retirement from ODIs as well as Twenty20 International (T20I), and in March 2012, he announced his retirement from international and first-class cricket. He appeared in the 2012 Indian Premier League as captain of the Rajasthan Royals.Rahul Dravid, along with Glenn McGrath were honoured during the seventh annual Bradman Awards function in Sydney on 1 November 2012.Dravid has also been honoured with the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan award, India's fourth and third highest civilian awards.In 2014, Rahul Dravid joined the GoSports Foundation, Bangalore as a member of their board of advisors. In collaboration with GoSports Foundation he is mentoring India's future Olympians and Paralympians as part of the Rahul Dravid Athlete Mentorship Programme.

RAHUL DRAVID'S PERSONAL LIFE: On 4 May 2003 he married Vijeta Pendharkar, a surgeon from Nagpur. They have two children: Samit, born in 2005, and Anvay, born in 2009. Rahul can proficiently speak Marathi, Hindi, Kannada and English.