BCCI Player Contract List 2023: All-rounders gain big appraisal, KL Rahul demoted; Checkout all details
BCCI Player Contract List 2023: The Board of Control for Cricket in India on Sunday announced the Annual Player Contracts for the Rohit Sharma-led Indian cricket team for the 2022-23 season, which is for the period of October 2022 to September 2023.
“The Board of Control for Cricket in India on Sunday announced the Annual Player Contracts for Team India (Senior Men) for the 2022-23 season,” the Indian Board wrote in a statement.
The 26 players named in the annual contract list have been divided into four grades – A+, A, B and C. Players in Grade A + fall in the play bracket of INR 7 crore, grade A in INR 5 crore, INR 3 crore for grade B and grade C with INR 1 crore.
Earlier in October, the BCCI announced equal pay for centrally contracted men and women Indian cricketers.
Jadeja, Axar, Pandya offered new BCCI Player Contracts
All-rounders Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel and Hardik Pandya gained significantly in the latest BCCI annual player contracts for the 2022-23 season.
While Jadeja, who is at the top of the MRF Tyres ICC Men’s Test all-rounder rankings, moved up from Grade A to Grade A+, a category that has only four top players now, Hardik and Axar were bumped up to Grade A from Grade C and Grade B respectively.
Jadeja has become the fourth player to bag a million-dollar BCCI contract for the 2022-2023 season. While Jadeja is the latest entrant in the A+ category, his teammates Rohit, Kohli and Bumrah have retained their contracts worth INR 7 crore.
Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammed Shami, and Rishabh Pant were also included in Grade A. These players will earn Rs 5 crore between October 2022 and September 2023.
Rahul and Shikhar demoted
Not all players have however been rewarded as some names have seen themselves fall down the pecking order with the most prominent name being KL Rahul who has been sent down to B Category due to his inconsistent run as of late.
Stripped of vice-captaincy, star batter Rahul was also dropped from the Indian playing XI after his series of forgetful knocks during the Australia Test series. Rahul was replaced by in-form opener Shubman Gill, who has been handed a demotion by the BCCI for the 2022-23 season.
Notably, Shikhar Dhawan was also handed a demotion in the newly released contracts.
While rising stars like Ishan Kishan, Deepak Hooda, Kuldeep Yadav, Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh, KS Bharat are amongst the new additions, and have been added to Grade C (INR 1 crore).
List of players included in the Annual BCCI Contract grade-wise
Grade A+: Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja
Grade A: Hardik Pandya, Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammad Shami, Rishabh Pant, Axar Patel
Grade B: Cheteshwar Pujara, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Mohammed Siraj, Suryakumar Yadav, Shubman Gill
Grade C: Umesh Yadav, Shikhar Dhawan, Shardul Thakur, Ishan Kishan, Deepak Hooda, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Sanju Samson, Washington Sundar, Arshdeep Singh, KS Bharat
Players who lost their annual BCCI contract
Veteran India cricketers Ajinkya Rahane and Ishant Sharma were both part of Grade B category (INR 5 crore) in the previous BCCI contract list, but have not been given fresh contract for the 2022-23 cycle. Meanwhile, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mayank Agarwal, Hanuma Vihari, Wriddhiman Saha and Deepak Chahar, who were part of Grade C (INR 1 crore), have all been dropped from the list.
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