The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has rewarded Ravindra Jadeja, Cheteshwar Pujara and Murali Vijay for their all-round show in the just concluded test series and elevated them to Grade A in the annual contracts for 2017-18 season. The Committee of Administrators (COA) met to decide on the annual player contracts for men cricketers for the period ending 30 September 2017.
The annual retainer amounts have been doubled for all the categories and Grade A players will be paid £200,000 per annum, Grade B will be paid £100,000 per annum and Grade C will be paid Rs 5000,000 per annum, which is double the amounts paid in the earlier years.
The match fee enhancement for men cricketers will be effective from October 1st 2016 onwards and Rs 1500,000 per Test, Rs 600,000 per ODI and Rs 300,000 for T20 international will be paid. The seven cricketers in the top bracket are Dhoni, Kohli, Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Ravichandran Ashwin, Jadeja and Vijay.
While seniors like Yuvraj Singh and Ashish Nehra have found place in Grade B and C respectively, the biggest name missing is Suresh Raina, who till recently was a permanent member of the limited overs fixtures. Young Rishabh Pant is a part of Grade C contract.
Raina had in fact played after October 1, 2016 but is not there in the 32-member list. Harbhajan Singh and Gautam Gambhir are not in the list as they have played before the said date, from which the contracts are to come into effect.
Grade A: Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, R Ashwin, Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ravindra Jadeja, M Vijay
Grade B: Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Wriddhiman Saha, Jasprit Bumrah, Yuvraj Singh
Grade C: Shikhar Dhawan, Ambati Rayudu, Amit Mishra, Manish Pandey, Axar Patel, Karun Nair, Hardik Pandya, Ashish Nehra, Kedar Jadhav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Parthiv Patel, Jayant Yadav, Mandeep Singh, Dhawal Kulkarni, Shardul Thakur, Rishabh Pant
