The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Thursday announced the Annual Player Contracts for Team India (Senior Men) for the period from October 2020 to September 2021.
Skipper Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, and Jasprit Bumrah are the three cricketers who have remained in the Grade A+ category. All-rounder Hardik Pandya who was in the Grade B category for the 2019-20 season has made his way up to bag the Grade A category while Bhuvneshwar Kumar who was in Grade A in the previous listing is now placed in Grade B category.
Spinner Yuzvendra Chahal was dropped to Grade C while Kedar Jadhav and Manish Pandey failed to manage central contracts.
Youngsters Mohammed Siraj and Axar Patel who gave some outstanding performances were rewarded with central contracts this season.
Players in Grade A+ category get INR 7 crore. Grade A, B, C bag INR 5 crore, INR 3 crore, INR 1 crore respectively.
Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Rishabh Pant, and Hardik Pandya have been placed in the Grade A category.
Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Shardul Thakur and Mayank Agarwal have been placed in Grade B.
Grade C has Kuldeep Yadav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Shubman Gill, Hanuma Viharu, Axar Patel, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar, Yuzvendra Chahal, and Mohammed Siraj.
(With ANI inputs)