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Indian fast bowler Mohammed Shami was named one of the 25 winners of the Arjuna Award for 2023 by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports for outstanding achievements across sports on the international stage. Shami had a magical 2023 which concluded with an incredible performance in the ODI World Cup 2023 with a tally of 24 wickets.
Talking about Indian cricketers, left-handed all-rounder Salim Durani was the first to win this award in 1961. Durani played 29 Tests for India and scored 1202 runs while picking 75 wickets. Since then, t he Arjuna Award for cricket has been awarded to 58 players so far, 12 of them have been women.
The first woman cricketer to win the Arjuna Award was Shantha Rangaswamy in 1976. She played in 16 Tests and 19 ODIs for India between 1976 and 1991. She is also the first female cricketer to receive a lifetime achievement award from the BCCI.
Arjuna Award for cricket: list of winners
1961 - Salim Durani
1964 - Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi
1965 - Vijay Manjrekar
1966 - Chandu Borde
1967 - Ajit Wadekar
1968 - Erapalli Anantharao Srinivas
1969 - Bishan Singh Bedi
1970 - Dilip Sardesai
1971 - Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan
1972 - Bhagwat Subramanya Chandrasekhar and Eknath Solkar
1975 - Sunil Gavaskar
1976 - Shantha Rangaswamy
1977-78 - Gundappa Viswanath
1979-80 - Kapil Dev
1980-81 - Chetan Chauhan and Syed Kirmani
1981 - Dilip Vengsarkar
1982 - Mohinder Amarnath
1983 - Diana Edulji
1984 - Ravi Shastri
1985 - Shubhangi Kulkarni
1986 - Sandhya Agarwal and Mohammad Azharuddin
1989 - Madan Lal
1993 - Manoj Prabhakar and Kiran More
1994 - Sachin Tendulkar
1995 - Anil Kumble
1996 - Javagal Srinath
1997 - Sourav Ganguly and Ajay Jadeja
1998 - Rahul Dravid and Nayan Mongia
2000 - Venkatesh Prasad
2001 - VVS Laxman
2002 - Virender Sehwag
2003 - Mithali Raj and Harbhajan Singh
2005 - Anju Jain
2006 - Anjum Chopra
2009 - Gautam Gambhir
2010 - Jhulan Goswami
2011 - Zaheer Khan
2012 - Yuvraj Singh
2013 - Virat Kohli
2014 - Ravichandran Ashwin
2015 - Rohit Sharma
2016 - Ajinkya Rahane
2017 - Harmanpreet Kaur and Cheteshwar Pujara
2018 - Smriti Mandhana
2019 - Ravindra Jadeja and Poonam Yadav
2020 - Deepti Sharma and Ishant Sharma
2021 - Shikhar Dhawan
2023 - Mohammed Shami
