On Thursday, India women team’s veteran cricketer, Mithali Raj suffered a demotion to Grade B from Grade A as the BCCI announced the central contracts for both men and women’s teams. While Mithali continues to be the team’s batting mainstay in the ODIs, the demotion was on the expected line as she had announced retirement from her T20I career in September last year.

She is now in Grade B bracket with the fellow veteran pacer, Jhulan Goswami. While both the stars cricketers have announced retirement from T20Is, they remain pretty much in contention to play the 50-over World Cup next year, set to be held in New Zealand. Mithali and Jhulan had helped India reach the last World Cup final and would be desperate to go one step better this time around.

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15-year old batter Shafali Verma has earned her maiden central contract as she impressed one and all in last year’s T20 Challenge in May and made her international debut in September against South Africa. As of now, she has scored over 200 runs in nine games at a strike-rate of more than 142.

The highly-rated batted recently made 124 against Australia A in Brisbane. Hopes will be sky high from Shafali when India visits Australia this year for the upcoming T20 World Cup in February-March. Along with her, Harleen Deol and Priya Punia have also earned their maiden central contracts. Both the players have entered the central contracts at Grade C.

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Meanwhile, T20I skipper Harmanpreet Kaur retained her A category contract alongside her deputy Smriti Mandhana and Poonam Yadav. On the other hand, Radha Yadav and Taniya Bhatia were promoted to Grade B from Grade C. The only player who has been dropped from the central contract is Mona Meshram, who was in Grade C last year and hasn’t played the game in recent times. The latest contracts run from October 2019 to September 2020.

Central contracts:

Grade A (₹50 lakh): Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, Poonam Yadav.

Grade B (₹30 lakh): Mithali Raj, Jhulan Goswami, Ekta Bisht, Radha Yadav, Taniya Bhatia, Shikha Pandey, Jemimah Rodrigues, Deepti Sharma.

Grade C (₹10 lakh): Veda Krishnamurthy, Punam Raut, Anuja Patil, Mansi Joshi, D Hemlatha, Arundhati Reddy, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Pooja Vastrakar, Harleen Deol, Priya Punia, Shafali Verma.