Arjun Deshwal

Some Lesser Known Facts About Arjun Deshwal

• Arjun Deshwal belongs to a farmer family in Basera village, Muzaffarnagar district, Uttar Pradesh.

• He started playing kabaddi in 2008. He began to play the game just for fun; however, after his uncle started training him for kabaddi, he started to lose interest in the sport due to the discipline and dedication the game required. In an interview, while talking about how he started playing kabaddi again, he said,
  

  My family supported me, but they told me to focus on kabaddi only. But once I started getting beatings because I wasn’t behaving properly, I ran back home and told my parents I didn’t want to play kabaddi anymore. But slowly, my guruji also helped me to get better. I began to learn to play well and practised hard in the morning and evening.”

• In 2017, he started playing in senior national competitions for Services.

  

• In 2018, he was selected in the Indian Army through sports quota and joined the Roorkee Center.

• He has played many kabaddi matches for the Services team and Green Army.

• He made his Pro Kabaddi League debut in 2018. In the PKL Season 6 auction, he was bought by the U Mumba for Rs 8 lakhs. Throughout the season, he secured 4 raid points in a total of 3 matches.

• In PKL Season 7 in 2019, he was retained by U Mumba for Rs 19.46 lakhs. He played 19 matches in which he earned 104 raid points along with two Super raids and three Super 10s.

  

• In PKL Season 8 in 2021, he was bought by Jaipur Pink Panthers for Rs 96 lakhs, which made him the third most expensive player of the season. ^[3]Lallantop Sports

• His exceptional performance during the 8th season resulted in him achieving 267 total raid points and 16 Super 10s in the tournament.

  

• During the 2022 season of the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL), he was retained by the Jaipur Pink Panthers for Rs 105.6 lakhs.

• In the season, he earned 296 raid points out of 465 total raids. He secured 7 Super raids and 17 Super 10s and was also titled the best raider of PKL season 9. At the end of the season, he received a cash prize of Rs 20 lakhs for being the most valuable player of the season.

  

• In June 2023, he helped the Indian Kabaddi team win a gold at the 11th Asian Kabaddi Championship held in Busan, South Korea.

• In 2023, Arjun played as a member of the Indian team that won a gold medal in the 19th Asian Games finals in Hangzhou, China. The team beat Iran with a score of 33-29.

• Apart from kabaddi, he is fond of playing cricket.

• In an interview, he shared that if he had not become a kabaddi player, he would be a farmer. ^[4]YouTube – Jaipur Pink Panthers

• In season 10 of PKL in 2023, he was again retained by Jaipur Pink Panthers. He earned 276 raid points in a total of 23 matches.

• In January 2024, he was appointed as a DSP in UP police. The Sports Department of Uttar Pradesh gave him a reward of Rs 3 crores.