On Thursday, BCCI announced the new contract list for the players for the year from October 2019 to September 2020.
Interestingly, India’s arguably greatest wicket keeper batsman, MS Dhoni was not offered a place, for the first time in his cricketing career. It should be kept in mind that the 38-year-old had last taken part in competitive cricket back in the semi-final of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 against New Zealand. He had missed the series against the West Indies due to being involved with the Indian army in Kashmir Valley.
There were no statements passed as to why he was not offered a contract, although he had already announced that the fans should not expect his comeback any time before January 2020.
It seems that not only the selectors, but the cricket board has also started paying attention to the emerging cricketers. Although Dhoni will be taking part in the upcoming 13th edition of the Indian Premier League, however, there are no confirm reports as to whether he will be representing India any further in any form of International Cricket.
Apart for MS Dhoni, players like Khaleel Ahmad, Dinesh Kartik and Ambati Rayudu have too been dropped from the contract list.
In the BCCI announced contract the Grade A+ category involved the expected trio of Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah and of course the Indian captain, Virat Kohli. All these players have been performing exceptionally well for India in all formats of cricket and therefore richly deserved this spot.
The Grade A category involved usually the regular players like Ravi Ashwin, Ravidndra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav etc who feature in at least two of the formats for the Indian team.
Hardik Pandya is one of the oldest players who has lost his A grade spot to B.
Players like Shreyas Iyer, Shardul Thakur and Navdeep Saini etc. are amongst the new additions to the contract.
Here is the complete contract list:
Grade A+ (INR Rs. 70 Million) – Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah.
Grade A (INR 50 Million) – Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Mohd. Shami, Ishant Sharma, Kuldeep Yadav, Rishabh Pant.
Grade B (INR 30 Million) – Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Hardik Pandya, Mayank Agarwal.
Grade C (INR 1 Million) – Kedar Jadhav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Manish Pandey, Hanuma Vihari, Shardul Thakur, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar.
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