Cricket: Indian board doubles central contract fee, Dhoni in Grade A

Sports Wednesday 22/March/2017 18:20 PM
By: Times News Service
Cricket: Indian board doubles central contract fee, Dhoni in Grade A

New Delhi: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Wednesday doubled the Annual Retainership fee of India's 32 centrally contracted cricketers with current skipper Virat Kohli and former captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni in the 20 million Indian rupees (Rs. 2 crore) Grade A bracket along with five others.
The Grade A players would now be getting 20 million rupees (Rs. 2 crore) as compared to the earlier 10 million rupees (Rs. 1 crore), while Grade B and C players will get 10 million rupees (Rs. 1 crore) and 5,000,000 (Rs.50 lakh) respectively.
The match fee for Test matches has been hiked to 1,500,000 (Rs. 15 lakh) per match from Rs 7.50 lakh earlier, while ODI and T20 Internationals will make them richer by 600,000 (Rs. 6 lakh) and 300,000 (Rs. 3 lakh) respectively.
All the payments will be in effect from October 1, 2016.
The seven cricketers in the top bracket are Dhoni, Kohli, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Murali Vijay.
While seniors like Yuvraj Singh and Ashish Nehra have found place in Grade B and C respectively, the biggest name missing is Suresh Raina, who till recently was a permanent member of the limited overs fixtures.
Young Rishabh Pant is a part of Grade C contract.
Raina had in fact played after October 1, 2016 but is not there in the 32-member list.
Harbhajan Singh and Gautam Gambhir are not in the list as they have played before the said date, from which the contracts are to come into effect.
The decision was taken in consultation with the national selection committee.
Grade A: Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, R Ashwin, Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ravindra Jadeja, Murali Vijay.
Grade B: Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Wriddhiman Saha, Jasprit Bumrah, Yuvraj Singh.
Grade C: Shikhar Dhawan, Ambati Rayudu, Amit Mishra, Manish Pandey, Axar Patel, Karun Nair, Hardik Pandya, Ashish Nehra, Kedar Jadhav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Parthiv Patel, Jayant Yadav, Mandeep Singh, Dhawal Kulkarni, Shardul Thakur, Rishabh Pant.