Indian pacer Mohammed Shami has been nominated as one of the 16 sportspersons for the Arjuna Award, the country's second-highest sporting honour while the badminton duo of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy have been selected for the the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award. The duo of Satwik-Chirag capped off a sensational year with a Gold in the Asian Games, a first for India in badminton in Games history after having already won the Swiss Open, Korea Open, China Masters and a Gold in the Asian Championships.
On the other hand, Shami was not on the initial list for the Arjuna Award but was added later after a special request from the BCCI to the sports ministry. Shami, who didn't play the first four matches in the World Cup, ended up as the leading wicket-taker of the tournament with 24 scalps in just seven matches. Shami picked three five-wicket hauls including a career-best 7/57 against New Zealand in the semi-finals and proved to be one of the important reasons why India got to the final of the tournament.
Apart from Shami, other athletes nominated for Arjuna Award include archers Ojas Pravin Deotale and Aditi Gopichand Swami, boxer Mohammad Hussamuddin, chess player R Vaishali, who recently became a grandmaster, shooter Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar, wrestler Antim Panghal and table tennis player Ayhika Mukherjee among many others.
Here's the full list of nominees:
Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award: Satwik Sairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty (badminton).
Arjuna Award: Mohammed Shami (cricket), Ajay Reddy (blind cricket) Ojas Pravin Deotale, Aditi Gopichand Swami (archery), Sheetal Devi (para archery), Parul Chaudhary and M Sreeshankar (athletics), Mohd Hussamuddin (boxing), R Vaishali (chess), Divyakriti Singh and Anush Agarwalla (equestrian), Diksha Dagar (golf), Krishan Bahadur Pathak and Sushila Chanu (hockey), Pinky (lawn ball), Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar (shooting), Antim Panghal (wrestling), Ayhika Mukherjee (table tennis).
Dhyan Chand Lifetime Award: Kavita (kabaddi), Manjusha Kanwar (badminton)
Vineet Kumar Sharma (hockey).
Dronacharya Award: Ganesh Prabhakaran (mallakhamb), Mahavir Saini (para athletics), Lalit Kumar (wrestling), RB Ramesh (chess), Shivendra Singh (hockey).
(With PTI inputs)
