BCCI: New Contract List Released for the 2024-25 Season
The Board of Control for Cricket in India is the apex body that maintains and regulates the complete cricket operations at the central level, for all domestic and international tournaments.
Each player who must be added to the Contract List is decided by the BCCI, as per the management’s consensus and player’s consistent performance. The latest list marks the retention of 34 players for the 2024-25 season, four more from the previous time.
Though the BCCI has not released the amounts for each of the four contract categories, but as per the available information, it is likely to be INR 7 crore (A+), INR 5 crore (A), INR 3 crore (B) and INR 1 crore (C) for the four grades respectively.
In the top tier, only four players have been mentioned, which are Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja. Out of these four stalwarts, Rohit, Kohli and Jadeja have been retained despite retiring from T20Is after India won the T20 World Cup last year.
The second category, which is the A category, marks the addition of Rishabh Pant in it, after being promoted from Grade B to A. This grade also has cricketers like Mohammed Siraj, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill, Hardik Pandya and Mohammed Shami. Pant’s return to the main squad after a sabbatical of more than a year and playing for all formats has been the prime reason for this upgrade.
On the third division is the B category, which has greats such as Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Yashasvi Jaiswal and India’s current T20I captain Suryakumar Yadav. Shreyas Iyer, the current sensation of Indian team in the white-ball format has finally made it to the list, after losing the contract in the previous year due to his non-participation in the domestic cricket tournaments.
Another inclusion in the C category list sees the comeback of Ishan Kishan, after being left out of it the previous time due to his withdrawal to participate in the domestic leagues. Later, he went ahead and represented Jharkhand state across formats in the 2024-25 season.
Some new entrants have made it to the contract list this year and are currently in the Grade C category. These names are Nitish Kumar Reddy, Dhruv Jurel, Abhishek Sharma, Sarfaraz Khan, Akash Deep, Varun Chakravarthy and Harshit Rana. Varun, among the new entrants in the list, has risen through the ranks in the past year. Harshit Rana, too, made his debut in all three formats recently and played in two matches at the Champions Trophy.
Shardul Thakur, KS Bharat, Avesh Khan and Jitesh Sharma, who were all in the Grade C list being the lowest of the retainers have been dropped from the latest contract.
