MS Dhoni misses out on BCCI's Annual Player Contract; Kohli, Rohit and Bumrah in top bracket
The BCCI announced the Annual Player Contracts for 2020 on Thursday, but former Indian captain MS Dhoni's name was missing in the list of 27 players who were given the central contracts.
Dhoni was placed in Grade A in the previous contract list, but found no place in the latest list released by the Indian cricket board. The 38-year-old wicketkeeper-batsman last played for the side in the 2019 World Cup, and has since made himself unavailable for selection.
He missed India's tour to West Indies, and the entirety of the home leg, which included series against South Africa, Bangladesh, West Indies, Sri Lanka and South Africa.
The BCCI Annual Player Contracts are divided into four grades - Grade A+ has the salary cap of 7 crore, while Grade A has a cap of Rs. 5 crore. The two are followed by Grade B and Grade C, which salary caps of Rs. 3 crore and Rs. 1 crore respectively.
Grade A includes India's Test regulars Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Cheteshwar Pujara as well as Ajinkya Rahane. Wriddhiman Saha, who made an impressive comeback in the Test team in the home series against South Africa, was placed in Grade B.
Five new players - Navdeep Saini, Mayank Agarwal, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar and Deepak Chahar were also added to the Annual Contracts. They are placed in Grade C.
While Navdeep Saini made his debut last year in the T20I series against West Indies, Washington Sundar, Deepak Chahar and Shreyas Iyer have been first-team regulars in the limited-overs format.
Here is the full list of BCCI Annual Contracts:
Grade A+
Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah
Grade A
R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Kuldeep Yadav, Rishabh Pant
Grade B
Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Hardik Pandya, Mayank Agarwal
Grade C
Kedar Jadhav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Manish Pandey, Hanuma Vihari, Shardul Thakur, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar
