BCCI Annual Contracts: Only three players in A+ grade, Hardik moves to A, Bhuvi drops down

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Thursday announced the list of players centrally contracted for the Senior Indian team (Men) from the period of October 2020 to September 2021. The list included 28 players divided into four categories namely, A+, A, B and C grades.

Only three players were there in the top-most grade, i.e., A+ where the payment structure is for INR 7 Crores. Skipper Virat Kohli, vice-captain in the limited-overs, Rohit Sharma and pacer Jasprit Bumrah are the only three players in the first grade.

All-rounder Hardik Pandya has moved to Grade A from his previous contract B in 2019-2020, while pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar dropped down from Grade A to B in the new contract. Yuzvendra Chahal, on the other hand, dropped down to Grade C.

While Mohammed Siraj and Axar Patel have been awarded contracts for their performances in the international season, batting duo of Kedar Jadhav and Manish Pandey have failed to bag the central contracts for the 2020-2021 season.

Here are the players in the contract list:

Grade A - Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Rishabh Pant, and Hardik Pandya

Grade B - Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Shardul Thakur and Mayank Agarwal

Grade C - Kuldeep Yadav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Shubman Gill, Hanuma Viharu, Axar Patel, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar, Yuzvendra Chahal, and Mohammed Siraj.