At the 2026 BCCI Naman Award in New Delhi, Shubman Gill was named the Best International Cricketer in the men’s category and Smriti Mandhana claimed the same honor in the women’s category.
The Best International Cricket award is also called the Polly Umrigar Award. Polly Umrigar was a former captain and the first Indian player to score a double century in Tests. The award came into existence in 2006–07 as part of the BCCI annual awards.
Meanwhile, this is the second time Shubman Gill has won the BCCI’s Best International Player Award in his career. Despite not being included in the T20I World Cup-winning squad, the right-handed batsman had a brilliant run in ODIs and Test cricket in the last two years.
Smriti Mandhana first won the auspicious award back in 2017-18. She has won this award for a record five times, and being just 29, the left-handed opener is likely to dominate this honor in the future.
Past winners of the BCCI’s Best International Cricketer Award
The first man to win the BCCI’s Best International Cricketer Award was Sachin Tendulkar in 2006-07. The ‘God of cricket’ also won it again in 2009-10. In his illustrious career, Sachin Tendulkar has earned several honors such as the Bharat Ratna, Padma Vibhushan, Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna, and many more.
Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Rahul Dravid, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, and Mohammed Shami have all won the Best International Cricketer Award once in their careers. These cricket legends have made India proud on the international level and cemented their legacy in the history books.
Ravichandran Ashwin, Jasprit Bumrah, and Shubman Gill have been honored with this prestigious award twice in their careers. Following the rise of India in international cricket in recent times, Jasprit Bumrah or Shubman Gill are expected to lift the award again in the future.
Notably, the most successful player in this award list is Virat Kohli. He has won the BCCI’s Best International Cricket Award a record five times in his career. He got his hands on these awards for the first time in 2011-12. Then he went on to win it for four consecutive years from 2014 to 2018.
Past winners of the BCCI’s Best International Cricketer Award
The first woman to win the Best International Cricketer Award was Harmanpreet Kaur. She is currently the captain of the Indian women’s national team. She also made history when she led the women in blue to their first-ever Women’s ODI World Cup title in 2025.
Poonam Yadav has won this prestigious award once in her career in 2018-19. She has also won the Arjuna Award in 2019. Poonam is the first Indian female bowler to take a hat-trick in T20Is.
Deepti Sharma is one of the most decorated Indian female all-rounders. She has won this award twice, first in 2019-20 and then again in 2022-23. Besides that, she has also won the Arjuna Award in 2020 and the Sportswoman of the Year Award in 2026.
The most successful woman in the BCCI’s Best International Cricketer Award history is Smriti Mandhana. She has won the award five times and recently equaled Virat Kohli’s record in the process. She won it for the first time in 2017-18 and then won it twice in a row from 2020 to 2022, and then back-to-back from 2023 to 2025. In 2018, Smriti Mandhana was also rewarded with the Arjuna Award.
Also read: Shubman Gill wins BCCI’s best international cricketer award and here is the full history
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