On Thursday, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced the central contracts for the upcoming season and surprisingly for the Indian fans, former Indian skipper, SM Dhoni has been excluded from the contract list. He was in Category A last season. The payout for all the four categories remains the same, with the trio of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah in the top category (A+) where they will get a payout of 7 crores.
The Grade A category players will be receiving ₹5 crores, ₹3 crores for Grade B and ₹1 Crore by Grade C.
Dhoni has been on a sabbatical from cricket since India’s exit from the World Cup where the men in blue were knocked out of the marquee tournament following a loss to New Zealand in the semi-finals. This will raise further doubts over the future of the former India captain.
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Jasprit Bumrah has taken giant strides in the last year and has become India’s pace spearhead across all the three formats. KL Rahul has been promoted to Grade A from Grade B. The Karnataka player has found some great form in the recent past, especially in the ODIs and T20Is.
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As many as 27 players have been divided into these four categories, with skipper Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, and Jasprit Bumrah being the three in the A+ category.
The BCCI announces the Annual Player Contracts for Team India (Senior Men) for the period from October 2019 to September 2020.
Saini, Mayank, Shreyas, Washington and Deepak Chahar get annual player contracts.
More details here – https://t.co/84iIn1vs9B #TeamIndia pic.twitter.com/S6ZPq7FBt1
— BCCI (@BCCI) January 16, 2020
This is how the BCCI contract stands for the upcoming season:
Category A: Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Mohammad Shami, Ishant Sharma, Kuldeep Yadav and Rishabh Pant.
Category B: Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Hardik Pandya, Mayank Agarwal.
Category C: Kedar Jadhav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Manish Pandey, Hanuma Vihari, Shardul Thakur, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar.
