BCCI central contracts: Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, Hardik Pandya demoted; Suryakumar Yadav now in group C

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) released their new central contracts and cricketers Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, Hardik Pandya and Wriddhiman Saha were seen getting demoted that were ratified by the Board’s Apex Council on Wednesday.

According to BCCI’s four categories – A+ which has annual remuneration of Rs 7 crore while A, B and C categories are valued at Rs 5 crore, Rs 3 crore and Rs 1 crore respectively – saw 27 cricketers be awarded contracts.

All-format skippers Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah were static as A+ players. But there were changes in the A category.

Pujara, Rahane and Ishant Sharma, who was in Grade A, were now seen in Grade B, after a slump in form that even saw them lose their spot in the home Test series against Sri Lanka.

Group A, which earlier had 10 players, has now shrunk to five cricketers with Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Rishabh Pant, KL Rahul and Mohammed Shami retaining their slots.

However, amid all the players, the biggest demotion was for injury-ravaged all-rounder Hardik Pandya. The man saw him get demoted from Grade A to C in the list along with senior opener Shikhar Dhawan, who now plays only one format – ODIs.

Even right now in the news – Wriddhiman Saha – who was also dropped from the Test team, was demoted from group B to C. Despite Saha breaching the central contract clause by public comments on selection matters and statements on BCCI president Sourav Ganguly and head coach Rahul Dravid, he has been kept in group C.

Spinner Kuldeep Yadav and pacer Navdeep Saini, who were earlier part of the contract, were dropped from the list altogether, while Suryakumar Yadav, by virtue of playing the requisite number of games, saw making an entry into the list and now in Group C.

Mayank Agarwal was also demoted to Group C from Group B, while pacer Mohammed Siraj is now in group B for his lion-hearted performances.

Women’s contract list:

Form the Indian women’s team, all-rounder Deepti Sharma and Rajeshwari Gayakwad joined Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana and Poonam Yadav in group A which has an annual fee of Rs 50 lakh. Veterans Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami remain in group B (Rs 30 lakh). 

The trio of Jemimah Rodrigues, Shikha Pandey and Punam Raut who did not make it to the ICC ODI World Cup 2022 squad was demoted from Group B to C (Rs 10 lakh).