BCCI annual central contracts announced; big name omitted

The BCCI recently released the centrally contracted list for the year 2019-20 which included 27 players. All these players were divided into three Grades, namely A+, A, B and C. As always there were contracts for these players but one big name which was omitted from this contract was the former Indian skipper, MS Dhoni.

MS Dhoni not considered

The wicket-keeper batsman who is yet to announce his retirement from White-ball cricket was omitted from BCCI’s central contact for the year 2019-20.
Dhoni is yet to play a game across formats since India’s ouster from the ICC World Cup 2019 semi-final. However, coach Ravi Shastri has said many times that Dhoni could come into contention for T20 World Cup to be held this year in Australia if he does well in the upcoming edition of IPL.
Apart from Dhoni, Ambati Rayudu, Dinesh Karthik and K Khaleel Ahmed were the other three names to miss out.

Some new names made it big

MS Dhoni‘s exclusion is definitely hard to digest, but considering the form Mayank Agarwal has shown in the past few series, he was definitely someone to gain immensely.

The Indian Test opener deservingly jumped to Grade B which comes with a retainer of INR 3 Crores. In another change, Test wicket-keeper batsman Wriddhiman Saha who was dropped last year to Grade C owing injuries has regained his place in Grade B along with Mayank Agarwal.

Other new names who have made it to the contract are, Deepak Chahar, Shreyas Iyer, Shardul Thakur, Navdeep Saini and Washington Sundar. All these mentioned names have made it to Grade C.

No changes in Grade A+

The Grade A+ includes players who feature in all the three formats of the game. There were no changes in this Grade with Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, and Jaspreet Bumrah retaining their INR 7 crore fee.

List of contracted players

Grade A+ (INR 7 cr): Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah

Grade A (INR 5 cr): Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami, Cheteshwar Pujara, KL Rahul, Ajinkya Rahane, Shikhar Dhawan, Ishant Sharma, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Rishabh Pant

Grade B (INR 3 cr): Hardik Pandya, Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Mayank Agarwal

Grade C (INR 1 cr): Hanuma Vihari,, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Kedar Jadhav, Manish Pandey, Shardul Thakur, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar