The Arjuna Award is the second-highest sporting honour of India, awarded by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports “to recognise outstanding achievements of sportspersons in the field of sports at international level.”

The Arjuna Award is given to sportspersons who have shown good performance over the last four years at the international level along with “qualities of leadership, sportsmanship and a sense of discipline.”

The first cricketer to receive the Arjuna Award was Salim Durani, the left-handed spin-bowling all-rounder who was conferred with the award in 1961. Since then, 57 other cricketers have received the prestigious award, with Mohammed Shami being the latest to join the list.

President Droupadi Murmu presents the Arjuna Award 2023 to Mohammad Shami for his excellent performance.#NationalSportsAwards2023 @MdShami11 pic.twitter.com/m0NHOnvdG8

— Doordarshan Sports (@ddsportschannel) January 9, 2024

Shami had a phenomenal 2023 World Cup where he took 24 wickets from seven matches at a scarcely-believable average of 10.70 runs per wicket. In the last four years, (2020-2023), Shami took 127 international wickets across formats – 54 in Tests at 29.70 apiece, 59 in ODIs at 20.64 apiece, and 14 in T20Is at 31.14 apiece.

Only three other Indian bowlers took more international wickets than him in this timeframe – Ravichandran Ashwin (154), Jasprit Bumrah (139), and Mohammed Siraj (138).

List of Arjuna Award recipients

*Names of female recipients have been italicized.

1961 – Salim Durani
1964 – Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi
1965 – Vijay Manjrekar
1966 – Chandu Borde
1967 – Ajit Wadekar
1968 – Erapalli Anantharao Srinivas Prasanna
1969 – Bishan Singh Bedi
1970 – Dilip Sardesai
1971 – Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan
1972 – Bhagwat Subramanya Chandrasekhar
1972 – Eknath Solkar
1975 – Sunil Gavaskar
1976 – Shantha Rangaswamy
1977-78 – Gundappa Viswanath
1979-80 – Kapil Dev
1980-81 – Chetan Chauhan
1980-81 – Syed Kirmani
1981 – Dilip Vengsarkar
1982 – Mohinder Amarnath
1983 – Diana Edulji
1984 – Ravi Shastri
1985 – Shubhangi Kulkarni
1986 – Sandhya Agarwal
1986 – Mohammad Azharuddin
1989 – Madan Lal
1993 – Manoj Prabhakar
1993 – Kiran More
1994 – Sachin Tendulkar
1995 – Anil Kumble
1996 – Javagal Srinath
1997 – Sourav Ganguly
1997 – Ajay Jadeja
1998 – Rahul Dravid
1998 – Nayan Mongia
2000 – Venkatesh Prasad
2001 – VVS Laxman
2002 – Virender Sehwag
2003 – Mithali Raj
2003 – 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
2017 – Cheteshwar Pujara
2018 – Smriti Mandhana
2019 – Ravindra Jadeja
2019 – Poonam Yadav
2020 – Deepti Sharma
2020 – Ishant Sharma|
2021 – Shikhar Dhawan
2023 – Mohammed Shami