On Thursday, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced the Annual Player Contracts for Team India (Senior Men) for the period of October 2020 to September 2021.
According to the press release by the BCCI, the payment structure of the players has been divided into 4 categories with A+ contract earning players ₹7 crore, Grade A earning players ₹5 crore, Grade B earning players ₹3 crore, and Grade C earning players ₹1 crore for the time period of October 2020 to September 2021.
A total of 28 cricketers have been awarded the annual contract by the BCCI in four categories. The Indian skipper, Virat Kohli, vice-captain Rohit Sharma and sensational bowler Jasprit Bumrah, have been awarded the highest grade, i.e, A+ grade.
Meanwhile, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Rishabh Pant, and Hardik Pandya have all given the Grade A contract.
Under Grade B contract, we have cricketers including wicketkeeper Wriddhiman Saha, pacers Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshar Kumar, and Shardul Thakur, and opening batsman Mayank Agarwal.
Under Group C, we have Kuldeep Yadav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Shubman Gill, Hanuma Vihari, Axar Patel, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar, Yuzvendra Chahal, and Mohammed Siraj.
Two names have been missing from the above lists – from the ‘A’ list are Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Kuldeep Yadav.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who has suffered a plethora of injuries over the past couple of years was demoted to Grade B, while on the other hand, Kuldeep Yadav has fallen out of favor due to his drastic drop in form was demoted to the C category. Allrounder Kedar Jadhav was not awarded a central contract this time.
