BCCI Nominate Dravid for Padma Bhushan & Gambhir for Padma Shri Award

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has decided to nominated the names of former Indian Captain Rahul Dravid & opener Gautam Gambhir’s names for the civilian honours. BCCI has nominated the name of Rahul Dravid for India’s third highest civilian award Padma Bhusan and Gautam Gambhir for the prestigious Padma Shri Awards.

According to a BCCI official,

“Dravid and Gambhir’s names were discussed earlier and president N Srinivasan and secretary Sanjay Jagdale were to take a final call in this regard. The last date for filing nominations was August 15 and the names have been sent.”

Dravid was earlier in line to get the Rajiv Khel Ratna award but the only cricketer in the panel Ravi Shastri was not present during the meeting to make a strong case for the former captain. Ravi Shastri said he did not get any invitation for the meeting.

Dravid has scored more than 24,000 international runs with over 13,000 runs in 134 Tests and nearly 11,000 runs in 344 ODIs. He has scored 36 Test centuries and 12 centuries in the shorter version. Rahul Dravid in the past had been given the Arjuna Award in 1998 and the Padma Shri Award in 2004.

Gambhir is a deserving candidate for Padma Shri. Gautam Gambhir has been a consistent performer for India in all the three formats of the game. His biggest achievement so far has been to win the ICC Test Player of the Year in 2009. In the same year 2009, Gautam Gambhir was honoured with the Arjuna Award by the Government of India.

Sachin Tendulkar is the only cricketer to receive the second highest civilian honour in Padma Vibhushan while nine cricketers including Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Vinoo Mankad and Lala Amarnath have received Padma Bhushan.