India cricketers R Ashwin and Mithali Raj will be recommended by the BCCI for the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, the country's highest sporting honour. Both have previously been conferred the Arjuna Award as well.
For the Arjuna Award, the BCCI will send the names of senior batsman Shikhar Dhawan, who was ignored last year, KL Rahul and pacer Jasprit Bumrah, PTI reported.
"No women cricketer has been nominated for Arjuna. Mithali's name has been recommended for Khel Ratna," a BCCI official was quoted as saying.
Mithali, who is captain of the women’s ODI and Test teams, is currently in England on tour, as is Ashwin. The women's team are on a multi-format tour while the men's team will play 5 Tests against England.
Mithali completed 22 years in international cricket last week and is also the leading run getter in ODIs with more than 7,000 runs.
Ashwin has been one of the mainstays in Test cricket with 413 wickets from 79 games.
Dhawan, who will be captaining India in the upcoming limited overs series in Sri Lanka, is a frontrunner for Arjuna. He has scored 5977 runs in 142 ODIs besides 2315 and 1673 Test and T20 runs respectively.
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