Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, Hardik Pandya and Wriddhiman Saha have been downgraded in the latest BCCI central contract that was approved on Wednesday by the Apex Council.
The BCCI has 4 categories – A + with an annual salary of Rs 7 crores , while categories A, B and C are valued at Rs 5 crore, Rs 3 crores and Rs 1 crores.
Previously, 28 cricket players won central contracts, but this year only 27 contracts were statically signed with Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah as A + players.
In addition, Pujara, Rahane and Ishant Sharma, who were in Class A, now in Class B, are after a drop in form, due to which they dropped out of the upcoming home test series against Sri Lanka.
The PTI announced on January 20 that they would be downgraded.
Group A, which previously had 10 players, has now been reduced to five and Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Rishabh Pant, KL Rahul and Mohammed Shami remain in their slots.
However, the biggest demotion is for the injured all-rounder Hardik Pandya, who has moved from grade A to C on the list, along with the older opener Shikhar Dhawan, who now plays in only one format and that is the ODI.
Here are the new central contract details:
Grade A+ (INR 7 crore) : Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah
Grade A (INR 5 crore) : Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami and Rishabh Pant
Grade B (INR 3 crore) : Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Axar Patel, Shardul Thakur, Shreyas Iyer, Mohammed Siraj and Ishant Sharma
Grade C (INR 1 crore) : Shikhar Dhawan, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Hardik Pandya, Washington Sundar, Deepak Chahar, Shubman Gill, Hanuma Vihari, Yuzvendra Chahal, Suryakumar Yadav, Wriddhiman Saha and Mayank Agarwal.
