List of National Sports Award recipients in cricket

As of 2020^[update], four cricketers have been awarded the highest sporting award, the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna. The first recipient was Sachin Tendulkar, considered one of the greatest batsmen of all time according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, and the first cricketer to score 100 centuries in international competition.^[5] He was presented with the Arjuna Award in the year 1994 and the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award in the year 1997–1998.^[1] He is also the highest run scorer of all time in International cricket and the first sportsperson to be awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award in 2014.^[5]

The second recipient, MS Dhoni, is the former captain of the Indian national team in limited-overs formats from 2007 to 2016 and in Test cricket from 2008 to 2014. Under his captaincy, India won the inaugural 2007 ICC World Twenty20, the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup and the 2013 ICC Champions Trophy. He was a wicket-keeper and one of the highest run scorers in One Day Internationals of all time. He was presented with the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award in the year 2007.^[1] In 2016, a sport biopic M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story based on his life was released.^[6]

The third recipient, is Virat Kohli. He is considered the best batsman of the current generation. A generational talent. Was icc player of the year multiple times. Currently, Kohli is the 6th leading run-scorer of all time with close to 26704 runs, and has notched up 74 international hundreds. In 2020, the ICC had named Kohli the Player of the Decade.

Rohit Sharma , the fourth recipient , the current cricket captain in all formats, hit 264, the highest individual score in ODI format. He also became the first and only cricketer to hit 5 centuries in a single World Cup during 2019 Cricket Cricket Cup.^[7][8] He is also the only cricketer to hit three double centuries in an ODI.^[9]

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