BCCI Officials In Debate Over Keeping Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma In Top Grade Of Central Contracts: Report
BCCI stakeholders are divided over keeping Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, and Ravindra Jadeja in the A-Plus Grade contracts, which offer Rs 7 crore. Changes in other categories are expected.
All stakeholders in the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) are not on the same page over keeping Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja in the top A-Plus Grade category of central contracts, according to a report by news agency PTI. However, the report added that ‘an influential section’ in the board wants the status quo to be maintained for the top category at least.
The BCCI men’s central contracts are divided into four pay grades. The A-Plus category has a retainership of Rs 7 crore, followed by A where the player gets Rs 5 crore while those in Grade B and C earn Rs 3 crore and 1 crore respectively. Only Rohit, Kohli, Jadeja and Jasprit Bumrah were the highest category contracts last year and it was seen as a reward for them playing all three formats for the country.
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Any men’s player needs to play either three Tests, eight ODIs or 10 T20Is during a particular calendar year to be considered for the next season’s BCCI central contracts. The contracts will be prepared by the national selection committee in consultation with the head coach (Gautam Gambhir in this case) and secretary Devajit Saikia before being placed in front of the Apex Council for approval.
Rohit, Kohli and Jadeja retired from T20Is last year after the men’s T20 World Cup, and no youngster has been able to replicate their all-format potential yet. This leaves just Bumrah as the all-format player.
Changes are certainly afoot in other categories. Ravichandran Ashwin retired his retirement from international cricket last year and will be removed. Axar Patel, who was recently named vice-captain for the England T20I series at home, and promising opener Yashasvi Jaiswal could be elevated from Category B to A.
One of the best performers of the season, Shreyas Iyer played 11 ODIs this season and is likely to make a return to the central contract list. He and Ishan Kishan were controversially removed from the last year’s list. The latter, despite his excellent start to IPL 2025, will miss the criteria to get into the contracts in any category because he didn’t play any international match in 2024.
Akash Deep, Sarfaraz Khan and Nitish Kumar Reddy are likely to get their first central contracts.
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