New Delhi: Shubman Gill, Axar Patel and Mohammed Siraj are the new entrants as BCCI announced the annual central contracts for the period stretching from October 2020 to September 2021.
Expectedly, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and Rohit Sharma have retained their places in the Grade A+ category. Hardik Pandya and Shardul Thakur have moved one grade up to Grade A and Grade B respectively. Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Yuzvendra Chahal have dropped down a grade while Kuldeep Yadav slid down two grades.
Grade A+ contract will receive an annual salary of Rs 7 crores while Grade A players will get Rs 5 crores. The Grade B and Grace C players will earn Rs 3 crores and Rs 1 crores respectively.
10 cricketers have been named under the grade A contract. These include the likes of veteran off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Cheteshwar Pujara, KL Rahul, Ajinkya Rahane, Shikhar Dhawan, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma and Rishabh Pant.
Shardul Thakur, Bhuvaneshwar Kumar, Umesh Yadav, Wriddhiman Saha and Mayank Agarwal have been kept in Grade B contract which brings them into the pay category of an annual INR 3 crores.
Despite Kuldeep Yadav’s continuous snub, he has bagged a C Grade contract along with leg spinner Yuzvendra Chahal, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Axar Patel, Shreyas Iyer, Hanuma Vihari, Washington Sundar.
Manish Pandey and Kedar Jadhav have dropped altogether from the central contract list.
