Why successful people do a Sreesanth ? Some insights from analyzing his signature.

The two "similar" stories:

"Sreesanth" is not an official phrase yet but I found it apt to use it as a metaphor for the people who have achieved something great in life but still somehow found a way to stumble and fall to disgrace. Indian pacer Sreesanth is cynosure of media's eyes these days because of his alleged involvement in the case of cheating in Cricket.

Let me narrate two instances in the recent times that shook me to disbelief.

Rajat Gupta was one of the most cherished success stories of Corporate America. With a career spanning multiple decades he was one of the most respectable names, perceived as an epitome of professionalism. In March 2011, the S.E.C. charged him in the largest insider trading case in the United States' history. Given his impeccable reputation, his acquittal was a sort of jaw dropping moment for the world. One factor that made the whole saga unexplainable was accepting the fact that a person of Gupta's stature, who was worth more than $100 million dollars, cheat just for gaining a mere few million dollars. It was his past mighty reputation that made big names like Bill Gates, Kofi Annan, Mukesh Ambani write to Judge to show some leniency in the verdict. It is said that some members of the Jury were seen weeping on passing the judgement on him. This case proved that even the best in business suffer from what Rajat later called "Error of Judgment".

Second instance that is dominating the headlines these days  is related to spot fixing in Cricket. S. Sreesanth who has represented India and was a part of 2 World cup winning teams was nabbed by Police on the charges of fixing the portion of the league Cricket match. The instance of Spot fixing is not new to Cricket but what is more surprising is that a person involved in the national team did it. The national team in India are more than handsomely paid through contracts and also for all the attention the players get, they become the face of many a products via heftily priced advertisement contracts. For instance, in Indian Premier League where Sreesanth was caught spot fixing. his franchise paid him around INR 2.2 crores per season spanning close to 2 months. This equates to playing about 16 matches. With the rotation of players throughout the season, an average player may get to play say half the matches. Equating all this, it could be safely calculated that Sreesanth was getting paid a staggering (approx) INR 1.15 Lakhs for bowling a single ball! For a person to still indulge in spot fixing despite earning so much so effortlessly would really take a different kind of motivation. I would be careful before using the word "effortlessly" in the last sentence because I do realize that sportsmen do work very hard and the especially the ones who have made it to the top would have done after making so many sacrifices in life. The same would be true for Sreesanth for making it big in life and he deserves credit for that part of his life.

An intriguing question:

These 2 stories are similar in some ways and dissimilar in other few ways. Dissimilar because both Rajat and Sreesanth belonged to different professions. Rajat was at the fag end of his career and had worked hard to establish a world class reputation before he was caught in insider trading whereas Sreesanth was more often in the news for wrong reasons and didn’t per say had a stellar reputation. He was more or less at the mid of his career.

The similarity of both these instances lie in the sheer stupidity of their act despite having achieved so much monetarily and otherwise. Some moments of bad thinking set them towards the path of failure causing almost an irreparable damage to their reputations. Their acts hung their heads and more so of the professions they represented in shame.

More intriguing question for me in these episodes is- Why do people after reaching the peak in their careers would ever think of getting into such an act ?

Its a hard question to answer but one quote from Mahatma Gandhi probably may help put things in perspective. It goes like-

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed'”

The keyword here is "Greed". And these cases prove that Greed sometimes plays a more dominating role in the minds of people who have achieved spectacular things in life. It’s as if a voice rings in the minds of these people that says "I have achieved so much in life, why not a little bit more before i sign-off". In achieving that "little bit more" people tend to lose the basic sense of ethics- a sense of deciding what is right or wrong. Even a momentary lapse in ethics can cause the problems of huge proportions as we can see in these cases.

What is greed, actually ?

Wikipedia defines Greed as

Greed is the inordinate desire to possess wealth, goods, or objects of abstract value with the intention to keep it for one's self, far beyond the dictates of basic survival and comfort. It is applied to a markedly high desire for and pursuit of wealth, status, and power.

Merriam Webster dictionary defines Greed as

a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as money) than is needed

To summarize, some of the phrases that Greed gets associated with are-

Excessive, Desire to possess wealth, Selfishness

Sreesanth's signature:

I got interested in seeing Sreesanth's signature only after the Spot fixing incident that took place. Given the way the investigations are going currently, i am somewhat sure Sreesanth has already delivered his final autograph to an affectionate group of people called as Fans. For this analysis, i had to rely on the signature sample available on the internet. I do not trust these public samples often but the traits i am going to list in the following words were found in various versions on Sreesanth's sample available on the internet, so we could be rest assured this close to accurate.

Does Greed show up in Sreesanth's signature ?

One of the traits that is significantly prominent in Sreesanth's signature is his desire to acquire or in other words- acquisitiveness. This trait primarily deals with desire to possess something material or intangibles like knowledge etc. Greed, in some sense is a function of Acquisitiveness in one's personality. This is represented at the kind of hook formation at the start of letter. In his signature, it can be found with starting "S" of his first name and last name.

Desire to acquire need not always be bad as being human beings, there is a need to have some ambition to acquire things or knowledge. Like the saying goes- "Excess of everything is bad", the same could be thought of as true in the case of Sreesanth. For numerous signatures and handwriting that i have seen and analyzed, i have hardly seen any person having such big hooks at the start of word. That certainly is a proof of something excess at play here and when any trait is in excess proportions in human personality, it often causes problems in behavior or general response to many life situations.

If i have to make an informed guess about the pressure exerted while writing signature by looking at Sreesanth's signature sample, i would go for High pressure. High pressure is often treated as a trait intensification portion of handwriting or signature.Trait intensification portion meaning that presence of these portions in the handwriting usually intensifies other aspects of the personality. If we add this fact to excessive desire to acquire, we get a person who could do go out of this way to meet his excessive desires to gain the material wealth.

Another interesting observation from Sreesanth's signature is the presence of Stubbornness in his personality. Stubborn people are more braced towards their own ideas and don’t want to be confused with the facts after their mind is set on something.Stubbornness is actually a defense mechanism. It develops from the subconscious fear of being wrong. Stubborn people think that they are right all the time. With this defense mechanism in place, Sreesanth would have turned down the voice of any external person, who would have tried to show him the right path once he set his eyes on the wrong doings.

  
The final words:

The world that we live in today often teaches us to learn hard from failures and become better.  But as these cases prove, more than failures, the successful people could do well to learn to handle success better. Most of the ills in the world come from lack of expertise in handling success.

Here's wishing all the sporting heroes of the world understand this and realize that the whole world looks up to them for inspiration.

Image Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._Sreesanth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajat_Gupta
http://www.fakingnews.com/2013/05/sreesanth-accused-of-stealing-towel-from-hotel/
http://www.123rf.com/photo_3071047_hand-with-money-greed-concept.html
Signature Source:
http://www.startiger.com/myStars/l.php?i=&s=195309&u=20768

Yuvraj Singh and his extraordinary comeback- Some insights from his handwriting

Over the last year or two, the name Yuvraj Singh has become synonyms with many impact words like- Victory, Comeback, Glory, Perseverance, Hard work, Cancer survivor and many more. The last one epitomizes his journey in the past one and a half year or so. His story seems almost surreal- within a month of being the Player of the Tournament for 2011 Cricket World cup, he got detected with Cancerous tumor and within a year of that he was back in the team playing demanding International Cricket. It is a story that reflects life at its best- nothing is certain, when you are at the zenith of your achievements in life, bad times would be queuing up and when you are bogged down by despair, the good times will be round the corner. He obviously had luck by his side in getting all the support and best possible treatment for cancer but looking at a long list of high profile people who lost their battles with cancer, one can only say that one needs more than just vanilla luck to surpass the deadly cancerous situation. While things like getting the treatment started timely is important but more than anything Cancer survivorship is about exhibiting a Strong mind and a steely human will to live despite odds. I will correct myself here in saying that "Cancer Survivor" is one of the phrases that better define Yuvraj Singh, he actually did much more than "just" Surviving cancer. Within months after his cancer treatment, he went through the hard pain of training, committed himself to domestic Cricket and was selected to play for India and even did well on his return the very same year. What he did was mind boggling and got me looking for  parallels of this achievement in history. I would be scared to name a certain Lance Armstrong, the disgraced cyclist now. Not so long ago I heard the story of Anna Bretan from California. Not a known household name but what she did was out of this world. Within 6 weeks of delivering a baby girl, Anna participated in Oakland Marathon and won with the timing of 2:57:33 (A Full marathon, mind you is 42.1 Km). Arguably, Yuvraj went through more stress on mind and body than a pregnant person but it is the stories like these that helps one not lose faith in life and to deal with obstacles heads on. These stories helps one believe that no matter how much down are you, tomorrow can indeed be better than today.

Yuvraj Singh's Handwriting sample:

Story behind Yuvraj's handwriting sample:

I recently got to read the latest book by Yuvraj- The Test of My Life from Cricket to Cancer and Back. This book is a biography of sorts as it looks at his life at various levels but with a focus on his fight with Cancer. The initial pages of this book had a message with Yuvraj's handwriting. As much as I found the book interesting, I was excited to see his handwriting that helped me analyze his personality.

What personality traits helped Yuvraj Singh's comeback to life ?

As a part of what is written in the next few paragraphs, the focus is on a few strong traits that helped Yuvraj stage an almost impossible comeback to life and Cricket. (A complete analysis of his personality through the handwriting sample would be more elaborate). Here we go-

Stubbornness:

Wikipedia defines Stubbornness as-

Stubborn, is a description of someone who is seen by others to steadfastly refuse to change their opinions, despite being presented with what others consider are good reasons to do so. 

A Stubborn person thinks he is always right and takes a stand. He may not even look at the other side and weigh other possibilities.

His handwriting clearly shows visible signs of Stubbornness in his personality. In fact, In his biography, he even mentions himself as Stubborn. An except below-

“I know i am a dheet. Not easy to translate into English but it means i am a kind of person who can make the stubborn people of the world look flexible and obliging.”

By its definition, it may give one an impression that Stubbornness is a negative personality trait. In my experience, it is often not all that right to classify human traits as good or bad because a given trait could be good or bad depending upon the context or the lens we choose to see them in.

At the early stages of detection of Cancer, Yuvraj was Stubborn to accept that he had a tumor that could be life threatening (even on insistence of his Doctors). Without realizing the enormity of what was growing inside him, he instead played the Test series as he didn’t want to lose an opportunity to seal his spot.

And later during his fight with cancer, it was his stubborn personality that refused to bog down to Cancer. No matter how miserable Chemotherapy made his outer body and the chemicals weakened his brain, it was his stubbornness to not give up to Cancer that made him be mentally prepared against the biggest opposition that he had faced in his life. Stubborn people are braced to their own ideas and once their mind is made up, that how they intend to keep it.

Defiance:

A Defiant person is the one who resists other's authority. This trait is often seen as resentment at being told what to do and as rebellion. The defiant person doesn’t like to be "managed" and is always alert for any sign of unjust authority. 

Yuvraj’s handwriting shows presence of Defiance personality trait as well.

There is an interesting story in Yuvraj's biography about the days when he started practicing Cricket. He was practicing at a Club with his Dad in his early days and Navjot Singh Sidhu happened to be in the same club. His father (a former Test Cricketer himself) requested Sidhu to assess his son playing.

Sidhu on seeing him practice had said that Yuvraj was not made for Cricket and showed no promise.

His Dad on hearing had apparently said to Yuvraj-

Apna basta utha aur ghar chal. Ab mein dekhta hoon ki tu cricket kaise nahi khelta (Pack your stuff, we are going home. I'll see how you don't play Cricket.).

He had the origins of Defiance traits arguably from this incident but inherently in his overall upbringing. This again like stubbornness can be seen as a negative trait but this is also a trait needed in some Leadership situations.

In his treatment of Cancer, he remained Defiant in his mind that he won let Cancer boss over him and even though he went through unexplainable pain and discomfort, he came back.

There is an interesting anecdote in his biography that speaks about Defiance in his personality. During his treatment, on one of the better days, one of his friends challenged him that though he may be good at Cricket, he can never beat him in Table Tennis. The stage was set and Yuvraj, still weak due to his ongoing treatment lost the first set of games 3-0. Even though he was physically fading and vomiting during the game, he asked for another set of games and made sure that he won 3-0 before he left the table.

Determination:

Determination simply is Firmness of purpose; resoluteness.

Yuvraj's handwriting shows the clear traces of Determination in his personality. Determined people hold on to a positive belief and ingrain that solidly in mind to sail through the tough times in life. Holding on to positive beliefs makes one a believer from non-believer.

At the start of chemotherapy sessions, Dr. Einhorn who treated Yuvraj said-

"After three cycles, you could walk out of here like a man who never had cancer.”

As Yuvraj points out-

“I remembered what Kapil Dev had said to us in the dressing room once when he came to speak to us. He said that there is an old adage which is annoying to hear in good times and wonderful to hear in bad times and it is : 'This too shall pass'.”

Rather than allowing himself to be fully distraught from the situations, Yuvraj continued to make himself more determined during the course of treatment and emerged victorious.

It was his determination that led to him starting his training in just a month after his return to India post treatment. A few months later, with Yuvraj playing all 3 formats of the game, was one of the most unbelievable things to have happened around.

I think it will be just fair and uncontroversial to say that Yuvraj Singh staged the most grand and difficult comeback in Indian Cricket's history. Media has often labeled him with incorrect adjectives during his early days but his come back to active life in recent times is more than a proof that this man is special. He is a hope for the lesser mortals who tend to give up all so easily on seemingly trivial things.

Here's wishing more power to Yuvraj in all his endeavors and especially towards Yowecan (a foundation to generate awareness and facilitate early Detection of Cancer) and success with Cricket.

Image Source:

http://myfitnesscare.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/yuvraj-singh.jpg

http://www.lrgiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/stubborn.jpg

http://www.fuelrunning.com/runnernotes/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/11.png

http://healthythoughts.in/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/determination.jpg

Aakash Chopra, Rahul Dravid and the curious sameness in their Handwriting Analyses

Last week has been quite eventful for me, not only because i was taking care of my little kid all by myself with his wonderful mother away on work duties but also because i still managed to find some time to analyze the signature of the man i so adore- Rahul Dravid. The story of how i got the access to his signature is there in the last blog. I got to post the analysis on a Sports website where i have recently started writing. This analysis did go somewhat viral in the website with more than 2000 reads, 50+ FB Likes, 40+ Tweets in less than a day.

Another interesting thing that happened was that Test Cricketer Aakash Chopra graciously tweeted the URL of this analysis to his followers and it invoked some interesting conversations which I followed closely. Below is the series of tweets for one such conversation between me,Aakash and one of his followers-

Aakash Chopra ‏@cricketaakash
Here's something for Rahul Dravid fans--What does Dravid's signature tell us about him? http://www.sportskeeda.com/2013/02/11/what-does-rahul-dravids-signature-say-about-his-personality/#.URjFYX4OpGQ.twitter …

Dilip Patel ‏@dilippatel_dba
@cricketaakash What about yours ? ;-) I guess, Must not be very different.

Aakash Chopra ‏@cricketaakash
@dilippatel_dba Had posted mine too :) And yes, it wasn't too different :)

Anuj Magazine ‏@anujmagazine
@cricketaakash @dilippatel_dba You will find anaalyses different when there is a large handwriting sample available. Its a true science.

Aakash Chopra ‏@cricketaakash
@anujmagazine @dilippatel_dba It wasn't meant to demean your observations...I hope you understood that!!!

Anuj Magazine ‏@anujmagazine
@cricketaakash @dilippatel_dba was jst making myself clear. The science is often misunderstood. Am open to any feedback.Thanks for response

Anuj Magazine ‏@anujmagazine
@cricketaakash @dilippatel_dba moreover I am not surprised at your and Dravid's same observations. Aren't both you similar in style of play?

Anuj Magazine ‏@anujmagazine
@cricketaakash @dilippatel_dba probably extent of said traits will represent a real diff btwn you & him.That's where large sample will help

 To me this was indeed an interesting and educational conversation. Interesting because what Aakash mentioned was somewhat true I.e. some traits between his analysis and Dravid's were really similar. Educational because this entire conversation made me think and search for reasons, which I eventually did and sharing my thinking here.

To help the explanation, let me put some high level lists as below-

1. No. Of personality traits revealed in Aakash's handwritten sample: 10

2. No. Of personality traits revealed in Rahul's signature sample: 5

3. Traits similar between Aakash and Rahul: Ability to focus, Perfectionism, Optimism , Remain calm in emergency situations, Not impulsive

4. List of additional traits in Aakash's analysis: Self Reliance, Leadership, Cumulative thinking pattern, Frank and Honest, Pride and Dignity

Armed with this information, lets dissect the situation further-

At the fundamental level, there was a difference in the nature of samples, in Aakash's case it was Handwriting + Signature whereas in Rahul's case it was only signature. When we talk about personality analysis via handwriting, the more the content of the sample, the better. As is evident in this case, Aakash's sample had handwriting as well as Signature (which should explain why i was able to see more traits in Aakash's analysis).

When i started learning Handwriting analysis, i was given the impression that this science helps identify around 100 personality traits. As i practiced and became more experienced, i realized that the different handwriting strokes do reveal around 100 traits but if we really start looking at each trait in combination with other we really have scores of traits that could get revealed. To get a sense of what i am meaning here consider the case of a person being highly emotionally responsive and that person having a trait called as temper in his personality. Combining these 2 aspects, we come to know that such a person will really explode with temper even with slightest provocation. If one really masters the art of combining the traits and making meaningful observations, we really are talking about a powerful science. 

With this background in mind, i would like to mention that in any handwriting sample one of the first and basic things that get analyzed are- the Slant, the Pressure and the Size of the handwriting. So even in a handwriting sample, which is seemingly illegible the experience analyst can really make a lot of sense by just observing these 3 aspects. If i look at Aakash's and Rahul's final handwriting analysis, the traits which are marked as similar actually pertain to 2 of these 3 aspects of handwriting i.e. the Slant and size (I am ruling pressure out because one can always argue that it is hard to measure the same for the digital sample) And i am talking about the similar traits such as Ability to focus, Calmness and non-impulsiveness. Other 2 similar traits i.e. Perfectionism and Optimism can known by looking at just the basic observations in the handwriting. 

So, it does it really surprise me that they had these traits in common because they appeared in just the initial observation of their respective samples. Moreover, different people do have similar traits.

One more important consideration here is the volume of sample. In both the cases, the volume of sample was less. More so in the case of Rahul where i just had a digital signature. The volume of sample actually helps to confirm the various aspects of analysis and one of which is the extent of observed traits e.g. as I noted earlier, both of these sportsmen have "Ability to focus" and "Perfectionism" as one of the similar traits but i cannot ascertain the extent of these 2 (or any other for that matter) traits without having a good volume of sample. To explain further, greater the number of words written in a sample, more the accuracy of the analysis in terms of exactness and extent. Knowing both of them, Aakash's ability to focus (while on crease) can be considered great but if i have to measure Rahul's ability to focus after getting influenced by what he has achieved on the field over the years, I would have to call Rahul's ability to focus as Legendary. I hope Aakash will agree with me here too.

The point I was trying to make it, i can comment better on the extent of the trait after really analysing a large volume of the sample.

Do i sound like making sense here ? Do leave your comments even if i don’t. Would love to hear from you.

Image Source:

http://www.timescontent.com/photos/preview/84884/Akash-Chopra-Rahul-Dravid.jpg

What does Rahul Dravid's signature say about his personality ?

One of my analysis is going to be featured in the book on my idol- Rahul Dravid along with some other stuff that i have written on him. I am presenting here some parts of the analysis that i did for this purpose. Read on-

For those of you who are wondering about the rationality of the title of this piece, Yes handwriting does reveal information about one's personality traits. Infact, it’s a science with a name that is Graphology.  Graphology is a scientific method of identifying, evaluating, and understanding a person’s personality via the strokes and patterns revealed by a person’s handwriting. But I must say that discussing about Graphology is a topic for some other day because the true subject of this article is a great man who made scores of people his fans slowly but steadily much the same way as he was known to bat. There are a very few sportsmen in this world who truly epitomize the role human qualities play in overall success as best as Rahul Dravid has done in his entire career. Grit, Hard work, Determination, Persistence, Never give up- These are just few of many words or phrases that one would normally associate Rahul Dravid with.

About the Signature sample:

Being a qualified Handwriting analyst myself, I was also on a lookout for a real handwriting sample of Rahul Dravid. I did find a lot on the internet but none with an assurance of being a real one. I recently got in a touch with the group of dedicated Rahul fans who are working to write a book on the great man. One of the panelists shared with me the letter that Rahul Dravid himself signed to give his acceptance to go ahead with the book project. Once I had that sample at hand, the Graphologist in me could not stop to get on with the analysis immediately.

Rahul Dravid's Signature analysis:

If I have to decipher Rahul's signature in a few words, I would say- one can easily see how prominently he has written "R" and the last letter "d" and in between the strokes are not really clearly visible with the exception of the letter "a". The portions of signature that are not clearly written are usually called as Illegible. Illegibility in some characters in the signature is not something unusual especially when we are talking about the celebrities who ought to sign the autographs every now and then. And with that frequency and hurriedness in writing Signatures, it’s not always possible to have legibility maintained throughout the signature. Illegible characters in the signature represent another dimension as well, which is that the person does not want to reveal his thoughts to the public. In case of Rahul, I think the illegibility is because of the former reason and that is the routine of signing many autographs taking its toll over the characters in the signature. But with still a lot of portion of his signature legible, i could go ahead and analyze and note the 5 important aspects of his personality that got revealed. 

Signature sample is resized to maintain the readability

Healthy ego, Pride:

In an handwriting sample, the ego can be seen by the size of Capital letters and Pride by the length of the stem of the letter "t" or "d".

Contrary to what is often believed, Ego is not necessarily a bad thing. Infact, it is in a way necessary for one's survival. In other words, for humans to exist and flourish- it is necessary to have sense of self and i.e. one's Ego.
However an inflated ego is a bad thing, even detrimental to yourself and relationships one may have.

In case of Rahul's signature sample, it’s more a healthy side of ego. It means that he is not an insecure type of person. During his playing days, it was quite evident from the way he handled the situations he was not given enough credit for. There were many innings where he played his best and scored heavily only to find out that the other player had a better day than him. The way he handled such situations without creating much fuss has been one of his legendary characteristics. He always took pride in what he achieved and focused on doing the best for the team.

Ability to focus:

Rahul's signature reveals some clear signs of legendary ability to focus on anything he is involved in doing. This is evident from the small size and formation of the non-capital letters in his signature. Small size of characters is an indication of ability of a person to concentrate.

The Oxford dictionary definition of the word “concentration” is “the act or power of focusing one’s attention”.

One of the best definition of the word "concentration" comes from Geet Sethi (World record holder in Billiards) when he says concentration is simply remaining in the present. The longer you can remain in the present, the greater your span of concentration. This definition quite beautifully sums up what concentration is all about.

This perhaps is considered as Rahul’s greatest quality as a Cricketer. And this directly comes from the fact that he played maximum number of balls by a player (31000+) and also has spent maximum minutes (43000+) at the crease in the history of test Cricket. The enormity of his feat can be judged from the fact that the next player in this list has played 30+ more test matches than Rahul and is still considerably behind in these lists. 

Add to this another fact that  Rahul Dravid saw 453 wickets fall while batting at the other side of the crease in a Test Career- the most by a batsman in a Test Career. This record is also a testimonial to the fact that he remained focused, unfazed even when wickets around him kept falling.

Fazal Khaleel, one of Rahul's old friend from Kindergarten and played with him in Ranji Trophy said about his ability to focus (in Rahul Dravid’s biography)-

Rahul was amazingly focused. He set goals for himself, spoke about it and went about achieving it with determination that i have never seen. His commitment and involvement was always total, even in the young days. He could not understand how others could be anything but totally committed.

Rahul's father Sharad had this to say (in Rahul’s biography) and this reflects his legendary focus right from his early days.

"...We encouraged him to play cricket but on the condition that his studies would never suffer. Blessed as he was with the ability to compartmentalize tasks, Rahul, like his mother, reveled in multitasking. His school friends speak in awe of his ability to study in a crowded bus each morning. There would be only standing room in the bus. Rahul would cling on to the vertical bar in the bus and read his school books unmindful of the din around him. He would get off the bus and straight away head for nets. In the evening, he would repeat this studying performance in the bus."

Optimism:

Optimism is handwriting is revealed by the beaseline of the writing moving upwards. Upward movement of the is very evident in Rahul's signature.

Optiimistic people have the ability to think best even in adversary. They have an ability to view the glass as half-full rather than half-empty.

That Optimism was an integral part of Rahul's character was demonstrated a lot of times in his career but one of the cases that stand out is him choosing to keep wickets even though he was already an established player. Many former players criticized the move thinking that it might impact his performance with the bat, might increase the chances to injure him. Rahul being a quintessential team man, focused on  the team's needs and chose to commit himself to an area completely unknown to him (he had never kept wickets in competitive Cricket before donning the gloves for India). He built the skills and succeeded. It impacted his batting well.

All this he could achieve because of the strength of his positive character, with the help of optimism that was at the core of his personality.

Perfectionism:

Perfection in the handwriting is revealed to an extent by the straightness of the baseline of the handwriting.

Not only the way he perfectly crafts his innings but perfection follows in everything else that he does prior to going to the innings as well. 

Being a perfectionist, he has a lot of structure. He tends to spend a lot of time putting everything in place and review work trying to make it more precise. He has excessive need for control in certain areas.

Everyone is aware of Rahul's perfection streak on the field but his wife Vijeta provides some interesting references to perfectionism in everything he does in an article she wrote for cricinfo-

 When I travelled with him for the first time, in Australia in 2003-04, I began to notice how he would prepare for games - the importance of routines, and his obsession with shadow practice at odd hours of day or night. I found that weird. Once, I actually thought he was sleepwalking! 

If I packed only two sets of informal clothes, he would rotate them through an entire tour if he had to and not think about it. He doesn't care for gadgets, and barely registers brands - of watches, cologne or cars. But if the weight of his bat was off by a gram, he would notice it in an instant and get the problem fixed.

Judgmental, not impulsive:

Emotional responsiveness of a human being is an critical part of his personality and can be known by looking at the slant of the handwriting. In case of Rahul, his handwriting slant is almost vertical and it means that-

Rahul is more ruled by her head not the heart. He is a cool, collected person who may not necessarily be so openly expressive emotionally. Some people may see him as unemotional. He is objective and given to evaluating facts before taking decisions. He is never quite impulsive. He uses his judgment to make decisions without any/much of influence of emotions.

This aspects of Rahul's personality is best reflective from this quote by Michael Slater after an incident in 2001, Mumbai Test-

"Sledging Rahul Dravid was one the mistakes of my life. He did not lose his cool even when i was hurling abuses at
him. I could not stomach the fact that he was single handedly demolishing the best team in the world. When the rage wore out on me, i realized that i was an animal and he was a gentlemen. He won my heart instantly"
- Michael Slater

One may think after reading through the analysis that I have just highlighted the positive things. I think I could do more if I had handwriting sample as well but one of the things that I have learned is to be non-judgmental about the personality traits of an individual. The reason is that the same trait if viewed through a different lens can be perceived as negative by some. Moreover, Rahul Dravid’s life and career is the one to be celebrated so I will leave negatives for some other occasion. Kudos Rahul Dravid!

Image Source:
http://indiannerve.com/this-day-in-history-december-16/