New Delhi: The BCCI on Monday retained megastars Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli in the top bracket of its annual players contract list, less than 24 hours after they played sublime knocks to win IPL games for their respective franchises.
The out-of-favour duo of Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan also returned to the fold in lower brackets in a 34-strong list of centrally-contracted players, which also includes
pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja in the highest-paid A+ category. Iyer and keeper-batter Ishan Kishan were dropped from the list last year for allegedly ignoring domestic cricket.
Both Rohit and Kohli figure in A+ category but it remains to be seen if the Mumbai batter will be asked to lead the team in England in the upcoming five-Test series when his red ball form has been patchy.
The BCCI mandarins are however tight-lipped on the issue since head coach Gautam Gambhir’s view will also matter in taking a final decision.
The BCCI offers contracts in four categories: A+, A, B and C with annual retainership valuation of Rs 7 crore, Rs 5 crore, Rs 3 crore and Rs 1 crore respectively. It is learnt that national selectors after discussion with head coach Gambhir and secretary Devajit Saikia had prepared the contract list at least two weeks back but held back the announcement.
Interestingly, it was announced hours after both veterans hit sparkling knocks — especially skipper Rohit, who was going through a lean patch. While Kohli hit an unbeaten 73-run knock against Punjab Kings. Rohit came up with an unbeaten 76-run knock against Chennai Super Kings.
Iyer was included in B category while wicketkeeper-batter Ishan Kishan made a comeback in category C.
Rishabh Pant, who was demoted to category B during the 2023-24 season as he didn’t play due to his recovery from a life-threatening accident, is back in A category in place of the retired Ravichandran Ashwin.
How central contract are awarded
Central contract is offered based on a player’s performance in the year gone by.
The A+ category is meant for all-format automatic choices. The A category is for players, who are Test match certainties and also play the other two formats from time to time. The category B is for players who at least play two formats regularly and C is for newcomers and one-format specialists.
Many would question how Rohit, Kohli and Jadeja were retained in the A+ grade when the troika has already announced retirement from the shortest format?
A top BCCI official explained the reasoning.
“The period of fresh central contract is from October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025. But the assessment year is October 1, 2023 to September 30, 2024. Kohli, Rohit and Jadeja played the T20 World Cup final in June, 2024 and hence at that time, they were all-format regulars. Going by that technicality, they are supposed to be in A+ category,” the official PTI on condition of anonymity.
“Similarly, Ishan (2 World Cup matches) and Shreyas played 15 ODIs and a handful Tests in the 2023-24 season and hence got their respective categories.”
Rishabh Pant was downgraded to ‘B’ from A in last contract because he hadn’t played any cricket during the year due to a life-threatening car accident.
After he returned to action in 2024, Pant played regularly in at least two of the three formats and hence is back in category ‘A’ in place of retired Ravichandran Ashwin.
Suryakumar Yadav has been retained in grade B because in last year’s list he was a two-format regular having played most games of ODI World Cup in 2023 and also regular T20 skipper.
While there is not much change in terms of contracts offered in the top three categories, Grade C now has 19 players compared to 17 in the last list following the inclusion of Sarfaraz Khan and Dhruv Jurel.
Newcomers in Grade C
The category C features new players such as Nitish Kumar Reddy and Harshit Rana, both of whom made their debuts between October and December 2024.
A player has to play three Tests or 8 ODIs or 10 T20Is in a calendar year to qualify for a central contract.
The lowest category has five new entrants in Harshit Rana, Varun Chakravarthy, Abhishek Sharma, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Akash Deep, who earlier had a fast bowling contract.
The only notable name missing in the list is Mumbai all-rounder Shardul Thakur, who last played for India in the 2023 ODI World Cup game against Bangladesh in Pune.
Fast bowler Avesh Khan, keeper-batters Kona Bharat and Jitesh Sharma have also been excluded from the list.
BCCI central contracts list:
A+ category: Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja
A category: Mohammed Siraj, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill, Hardik Pandya, Mohammed Shami, Rishabh Pant
B category: Suryakumar Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shreyas Iyer.
C category: Rinku Singh, Tilak Verma, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shivam Dube, Ravi Bishnoi, Washington Sundar, Mukesh Kumar, Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Rajat Patidar, Dhruv Jurel, Sarfaraz Khan, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ishan Kishan, Abhishek Sharma, Akash Deep, Varun Chakaravarthy, Harshit Rana.
