Kidambi Srikanth, Somdev Devvarman receive Padma Shri awards

2017 was undoubtedly the year for Kidambi Srikanth as he kept on defying all the logic to perform exceedingly well on the world stage. In the last season alone, the 24-year-old won Denmark Open, Australian Open, Indonesia Open, and China Open to be the first Indian player to win four Superseries titles in a calendar year. He received a lot of accolades and also got many awards for the same which now culminated with the Padmashri award - the country’s fourth-highest civilian award.

Apart from him, former Asian Games medalist Somdev Devvarman also recieved the prestigious honour. Somdev was considered as one of India’s finest singles players and also vindicated that hope surrounding him by reaching a career-best ranking of 62 in July 2011. But, sadly, he couldn’t deliver on that hope due to injury concerns. His career was on a downhill spiral and he ended the year 2016, with 902 ranks in world rankings. 

MS Dhoni has also been awarded the prestigious Padma Bhushan, India’s third highest civilian award, along with Indian billiards player Pankaj Advani. Dhoni has become the first cricketer to be awarded the honour since Rahul Dravid had won it way back in 2013.

Apart from them, India’s first Paralympic gold medallist, Murlikant Petkar also awarded the Padma Shri in New Delhi. He won an individulal gold medal in the 1972 Summer Paralympics in Heidelberg in Germany.  He managed to do that in 37.33 seconds in the 50m freestyle swimming event to set a world record. In the same Games, he also participated in javelin throw event, precision javelin throw, and slalom and was a finalist in all three events.