The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) recently announced the central contracts for the 2022-23 season with four cricketers in the top bracket earning INR 7 crore per year. Ravindra Jadeja was promoted to the A+ category with Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah also part of the list. Meanwhile, Pakistan's Babar Azam is the top cricketer in the country and is often compared to Kohli on the field.
However, when it comes to earning the salary, Babar is nowhere close to his Indian counterpart. Perhaps, Babar's salary is even pretty much less than Sanju Samson, one of the most trending cricketer in India who is yet to get enough chances to play for India. Samson has been retained in Grade C category by BCCI in the latest contracts and will be earning INR 1 crore annually.
Now Babar Azam is also in the top category of PCB's annual contract playing both red and white-ball cricket. Rather PCB increased the match fees by 10% for players across all formats. Accordingly, Babar's salary per month is 1.25 million PKR per month and that amounts to INR 43,50,000 annually. The amount is more than half less when compared with Samson while Kohli easily earns 16 times more than the Pakistan captain.
As for the BCCI contracts, the board demoted KL Rahul from A to B category while the likes of Ajinkya Rahane, Hanuma Vihari and Deepak Chahar have been dropped from the contract. Interestingly, Shikhar Dhawan has been retained despite losing his place from ODI and T20I teams to Shubman Gill. Among promotions, apart from Jadeja, Hardik Pandya, Shubman Gill, Axar Patel and Suryakumar Yadav are also benefited thanks to their performance for India over the last 12 months. As for Pakistan, apart from Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan, Shaheen Afridi, Hasan Ali and Imam-ul-Haq have both red and white-ball contracts.
