Rahul Dravid recommended for Dronacharya award, Kohli for Khel ratna

New Delhi: The Board of Control for Cricket of India (BCCI) on Thursday recommended Virat Kohli for the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, Sunil Gavaskar for Dhyan Chand Lifetime Achievement award and former India captain Rahul Dravid for the Dronacharya award."Yes, we have sent a number of nominations in various categories to the government. Rahul is the BCCI nominee for the Dronacharya award," said CoA chief Vinod Rai.

Dravid has been nominated for guiding the India U-19 team to World Cup title early this year. Under his guidance, the Colts batch of 2016 played the finals. He has worked with India A team also and is the bridge between international and junior cricket."It happened when a former India opener had signed two nominations where coaches claimed that the player worked under them. From then, we had stopped sending nominations," a BCCI official said.

"However when Rajkumar Sharma (Kohli's coach) got Dronacharya award, it was a personal nomination. He was not BCCI nominee. For someone of Rahul's stature, we have decided to depart from convention," the official added.Kohli's name was sent in 2016 but being the Olympic year, the three stars of Rio, PV Sindhu, Sakshi Malik and Deepa Karmakar were conferred with the award.(UNI)