The BCCI central contracts for men are yet to be released, fuelling speculations over some rejigging in the A+ category following the retirement of stalwarts Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja from the T20 format. While the women’s central contract list with 16 names across three categories was released on Monday, the men’s list which had 30 names last time, is expected to come out in the next few days. A+ category has a retainership fee of Rs 7 crore, followed by A where a player gets Rs 5 crore while cricketers in Grade B and C are paid Rs 3 crore and 1 crore respectively.
The central contracts are prepared by the national selection committee in consultation with the head coach and secretary (Devajit Saikia) before being placed in front of the Apex Council for approval.
It has been learned that not all stakeholders are on same page over retention of all senior players in A+ category. Bumrah, Rohit, Kohli and Jadeja were handed the highest category contracts last year.
A+ is a category where players who are automatic selections across all three formats are slotted. Now that Kohli, Rohit and Jadeja have all retired from T20 Internationals, they have become two format players. Only Bumrah, the Test captain-in-waiting, is an all format certainty.
However an influential section in BCCI wants status quo to be maintained as far as A+ category is concerned.
In the A category, Ravichandran Ashwin will not be there as he has already announced his retirement from international cricket. There is a strong chance that Axar Patel, who was recently named vice-captain for England T20I series, could be elevated from Group B to A.
Axar has been a regular in both ODIs and T20Is and has also played 14 Tests so far for India.
Shreyas Iyer, who was dropped last season, is certain to make a comeback in one of the categories considering he has played 11 ODIs this season.
For any player to enter the central contract list, he needs to play either three Tests or eight ODIs or 10 T20Is during a particular calendar year to be considered for the next season.
It will also be interesting to see if young Yashasvi Jaiswal gets an elevation from his Grade B contract considering his promise across formats. In the new list, Bengal speedster Akash Deep, who has played seven Tests and Sarfaraz Khan, who has played three during the calendar year, should be inducted in Group C.
Ditto for Nitish Kumar Reddy, who has already played the full Border-Gavaskar series (five Tests apart from four T20Is) and will get automatic induction into the central contract list.
Shardul Thakur and Ruturaj Gaikwad were part of the last year’s list but they are not fulfilling the requisite criteria at the moment to make the list. However, selection committee in consultation with head coach and secretary can always make exceptions.
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