BCCI to nominate Rahul Dravid for Khel Ratna, Yuvraj Singh for Arjuna

MUMBAI: The cricket board has decided to recommend recently retired stalwart Rahul Dravid for the prestigious Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award and Yuvraj Singh, the player of the World Cup, for the Arjuna Award.

"We will be forwarding the names of Rahul Dravid for Khel Ratna Award and Yuvraj Singh for the Arjuna Award next week (to the government)," BCCI's CAO Prof Ratnakar Shetty said on Saturday.

The government had recently extended the deadline for the nominations till July 20.

The 39-year-old Dravid retired from all forms of the game at the international level following the Test series in Australia last year after having accumulated over 23,000 runs in Tests and ODIs combined since making a spectacular debut at Lord's in 1996.

If awarded the highest sports award in the country that was instituted in 1991-92, former India captain Dravid would follow the footsteps of his illustrious ex-teammates Sachin Tendulkar (1997-98) and Mahendra Singh Dhoni (2007-08) as the third cricketer to win the coveted award.

So far 20 sportspersons have been bestowed the award. Yuvraj, who has started practising at the nets at the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore after his battle with a rare form of germ cell cancer between his lungs, was India's hero in the 2011 World Cup triumph.