‘Rahul’ is a popular name in India, and even in Indian cricket. While the legendary Rahul Dravid is one of the most famous cricketers to ever play for the country, another Rahul is making a name for himself nowadays. However, KL Rahul wasn’t named after the cricketer Rahul Dravid. The current India vice-captain has quite an interesting story about how he got the name.
In the first episode of Breakfast With Champions Season 7, Rahul told the host Gaurav Kapur two versions of the story about his name. In fact, it was only a couple of years ago that the story that his mother has been telling him wasn’t actually true.
“Her story was that she was a huge Shah Rukh Khan fan and his characters in the 90s were Rahul, right? So, I used to go with that story. I told one of my friends. who watches probably a lot of Bollywood movies, and he said, ‘Bro, Shah Rukh’s first character as Rahul was in 1994. You’re born in 1992. So, it doesn’t make sense’,” Rahul said on the show.
The Karnataka lad said that he googled the details himself and understood that his mother has been lying to him. When he went to ask her about the same, she said: “Something like that… Who cares now!”
However, Rahul’s dad has always had another version of the story behind his name. But, that story also came out of a misunderstanding. Rahul revealed that his father has been a huge fan of Sunil Gavaskar. Since Gavaskar named his son Rohan, his father also wanted to name his son ‘Rohan’. However, KL Rahul’s father misheard Rohan as Rahul and ended up giving his son the wrong name.
During the chat, Rahul also revealed that his parents have never been impressed with his cricketing career despite the status he has gone on to achieve. It was when Rahul landed an RBI job. He said that was the moment when they were the happiest.
“The happiest they’ve been is when I got an RBI job. Got a central government job, so they were happy. I had played four years for India already but that didn’t make them happy. This was like, yes now you’ll be stable,” he revealed on the show.
In fact, Rahul also revealed that during the lockdown due to Covid-19, his mother had asked him to complete his degree by writing the papers.
