Rahane, Pujara, Hardik get demoted in BCCI central contracts

BCCI renewed contracts of many Indian cricekters  Out of favour veteran batter Cheteshwar Pujara and former Test vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane were downgraded in the latest central contracts list of the BCCI that was ratified by the Board's Apex Council on Wednesday. The BCCI has four categories -- A which has annual remuneration of Rs 7 crore while A, B and C categories are valued at Rs 5 crore, Rs 3 crore and Rs 1 crore respectively. Last time, 28 cricketers were provided central contracts but this year, 27 have been awarded contracts with Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah static as A players. Accordingly, Pujara, Rahane and Ishant Sharma, who were in Grade A are now in Grade B, after a slump in form that saw them being dropped from the upcoming home Test series against Sri Lanka.

Group A, which earlier had 10 players, has now shrunk to five with Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Rishabh Pant, KL Rahul and Mohammed Shami retaining their slots. The biggest demotion, however, was for injury-ravaged all-rounder Hardik Pandya, who has been dropped from Grade A to C in the list along with senior opener Shikhar Dhawan, who now plays only one format and that is ODIs. According to information Promoted: Shreyas, Axar, Siraj - C to B. Surya - got a contract of C. Demoted: Shikhar Dhawan - A to C. Hardik Pandya - A to C. Rahane, Pujara, Ishant - A to B. Saha, Mayank, Umesh, Bhuvi B to C. Kuldeep and Saini - Dropped.

In the women's Central contracts, Deepti Sharma and Rajeshwari Gayakwad joined Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana and Poonam Yadav who were already in group A which has an annual retainership fee of Rs 50 lakh. Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami remain in group B (Rs 30 lakh). Jemimah Rodrigues has been demoted from Group B to C (Rs 10 lakh).