The Board of Control for Cricket in India announced the annual central contracts for 2024-25 season, marking the return of Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan, who were left out of the 2023-24 list.
Only four players made it to the A+ category -- Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, and Ravindra Jadeja.
Wicketkeeper-batter Rishabh Pant was upgraded to A category.
Shreyas was included in Category B (Rs 3 crore annual remuneration) and Kishan received a Group C contract (annual salary of Rs 1 crore).
Youngsters Nitish Kumar Reddy, Harshit Rana, Abhishek Sharma, Rajat Patidar and Varun Chakaravarthy received maiden BCCI central contracts and have been included in category C.
The central contracts are divided in 4 categories -- A+, A, B, C -- depending upon the players' performances and participation across three formats. There were speculations over Rohit, Kohli and Jadeja's exit from A+ category (top bracket offering an annual salary of INR 7 crore) after their retirement from T20 internationals, but the trio was retained by the board.
BCCI's Central Contracts For 2024-25 Season:
Kishan and Iyer were left out from the list of centrally-contracted players last year, after failing to show up for domestic engagements despite a directive from the BCCI.
While Kishan went on a long break after the end of the ODI World Cup last year and remained unavailable until the IPL, Iyer eventually did feature in a few matches for Mumbai in the Ranji Trophy including the semi-final and the final.
However, Iyer still found himself at the receiving end after it emerged that he had attended a Kolkata Knight Riders' camp in Mumbai when his domestic side was busy playing a Ranji Trophy fixture.
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?
PTI quoted a top BCCI official as saying: '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,'
'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,' the official PTI on condition of anonymity.
Rishabh Pant was downgraded to 'B' from A in last contract because he hadn't played any cricket during the year following a 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.
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