Dhoni was born on 7 July 1981 in Ranchi, Bihar (now in Jharkhand) in a Hindu Rajput family to Pan Singh and Devaki Devi. His parents hailed from Lwali village in Uttar Pradesh (now Uttarakhand) and he was the youngest of three children. His family spells the surname as "Dhauni". Dhoni did his schooling at DAV Jawahar Vidya Mandir where he started playing football as a goal keeper but later moved to play cricket on the suggestion of his coach Keshav Banerjee.From 2001 to 2003, Dhoni worked as a Travelling Ticket Examiner (TTE) at Kharagpur under South Eastern Railway zone of Indian Railways. The Indian ODI team in the early 2000s saw Rahul Dravid as the wicket-keeper to ensure that the wicket-keeper spot didn't lack in batting talent and also tried other wicket-keeper/batsmen like Parthiv Patel and Dinesh Karthik. With Dhoni performing well for the India A squad, he was picked in the ODI squad for the Bangladesh tour in December 2004. Dhoni made his debut in the first match of the series and was run out for a duck. Dhoni was picked for the subsequent ODI series against Pakistan. In the second match of the series in Visakhapatnam, Dhoni playing in his fifth one-day international, scored 148 runs off 123 deliveries which surpassed the earlier record for the highest score by an Indian wicket-keeper .Dhoni played in the Sri Lankan bilateral ODI series in October–November 2005 and was promoted to No. 3 in the batting order in the third ODI at Jaipur where he scored an unbeaten 183 runs off 145 balls, winning the game for India.The innings would surpass his earlier record for the highest score by an Indian wicket-keeper and was described in Wisden Almanack as 'Uninhibited, yet anything but crude'. It was also the highest individual score in ODI cricket in a run chase, a record which was broken seven years later by Shane Watson.Dhoni ended the series with the highest aggregate of 346 runs and was awarded the Man of the series.