BCCI announces annual player retainership 2024-25 for senior women

Despite not having represented the national side since October last year, Shafali Verma has made it to the BCCI annual retainers list for 2024-25. Shafali has been put in Grade B, whose retainer amounts to INR 30 lakh.

In all, the BCCI has awarded 16 contracts of the 17 they put up for grabs previously in April 2023. The 2023-24 season contracts are not public.

Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana and Deepti Sharma are the only three players to be given Grade A contracts (50 lakh), just like last time. The other four members of the five offered the same Grade B in 2023 remain unaffected, with left-arm spinner Rajeshwari Gayakwad the only one to have missed out completely.

The new entrants to Grade C (10 lakh) include off-spinning all-rounder Shreyanka Patil, seam-bowling pair Arundhati Reddy and Titas Sadhu, allrounder Amanjot Kaur and wicketkeeper Uma Chetry.

All-rounders Sneh Rana and Pooja Vastrakar, who have not played since the T20 World Cup in October last year, kept the Grade C retainers. Vastrakar is still recovering from a recurring back injury that's kept her out of WPL 2025 too, while Rana last played for the national team in 2023. Yastika Bhatia also keeps her place despite struggling with form and fitness issues in the past year.

Notable absentees include batters Harleen Deol and Pratika Rawal, and legspinner Priya Mishra. While Harleen bounced back from a prolonged injury layoff to crack her maiden international century in the home ODIs against West Indies in January, Rawal made a promising start to her international career.

Rawal's 444 runs is more than any woman has managed in her opening six innings. Mishra, on the other hand, had made her ODI debut against New Zealand in October, and has been in every single squad since, and was one of WPL 2025's breakout Indian players.